


it was a stained glass variation of the truth

by MissFaber



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (Very Slight), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Background Relationships, Braime - Freeform, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fake Dating, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Gendrya - Freeform, Holidays, Infertility, Jon Snow and Sansa Stark Are Not Related, Jon Snow and the Starks Are Not Related, Jon Snow is a Targaryen, Jonsa Week 2019, Mentions of past abuse, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Dinner, bran x meera, nedcat, shireen x rickon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-02-12 17:28:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21480139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissFaber/pseuds/MissFaber
Summary: They were, now they aren’t. But for the sake of their family, they pretend.(Or, the one where Jon and Sansa pretend to still be together so as not to ruin Thanksgiving dinner.)
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 465
Kudos: 621
Collections: JonsaWeek2019





	1. biting off the "sweetheart"

**Author's Note:**

> Work title from "Neptune" Sleeping at Last. 
> 
> Happy Jonsa Week, fam! This is my entry for day one, _ Past, Present, Future,_, although it also fits for for Tropes (fake dating), Lies, and Modern. I have other entries for those days but I'm having fun kinda playing bingo and seeing how many prompts a fic could fit into. 
> 
> I wanted to finish this before the week started but couldn't do it, I have four chapters now and I foresee about two more, so it shouldn't be too long... Anyway, enjoy! 
> 
> [And check out the photoset for this fic!!](https://missfaber.tumblr.com/post/189150746561/it-was-a-stained-glass-variation-of-the-truth-a)

The black Range Rover is parked at the end of the block, its massive size making it hard to miss. Jon followed her instructions, then. Sansa resolutely does not look, does not try to find the shape of him behind the windshield. Instead she thinks on how cumbersome it was to climb into that car, how difficult it was to park in the city, how Jon always insisted—

_(“Like that—yes—ride me, sweetheart.” The tinted windows, the leather of the backseat sliding against her legs, the bite of Jon’s fingers on her waist, bouncing her up and down. The scrape of his teeth against her breast, bared by her dress dragged down, the expression of complete bliss on his face.) _

—they use it on weekends away. Never mind that her tiny two door Mercedes could barely fit one suitcase, let alone a seventy pound husky.

But Sansa can’t think of Ghost. Tears have already started to fill her eyes. She refuses to blink, not wanting to ruin her makeup. The smears would be telling; a show of weakness. A crack in her armor.

She waits until she’s finished parallel parking to dab at her eyes carefully with a tissue. She waits another minute, to be cautious, before checking her reflection and opening the car door and stepping out and leaning back in to grab the burgundy gift bag from the passenger seat, a series of hurried movements she hates, because she thinks Jon can see her from where he’s parked.

They’re five blocks away from the Stark house. This way no one will see them arriving and leaving in separate cars. The number of guests combined with their late arrival surely means that the Stark driveway, though sizeable, has already filled up; it wouldn’t be suspicious for them to need to look for street parking. It’s Sansa who thought of that.

It’s Sansa who thought of everything, every part of this plan.

She straightens and locks the car with the remote key in her hand. She starts for Jon’s Range Rover before she sees him standing at the intersection, the first of four they’ll have to cross. He’s standing with his back to her, so Sansa lets herself look as she walks over. The line of his broad shoulders in that fitted sweater. The dark of night makes it difficult to see the color, but years of sharing a life have made her intimately familiar with his wardrobe. She thinks it’s the maroon one. A good choice. Unless he’s bought something new. The thought twists her stomach, hurts her more than it should.

His hair is tied back, and Sansa would feel grateful at being spared the temptation of his free curls all night, except she knows how the style exposes the sharp bones of his handsome face.

_Fuck. _Her eyes are dry even as her heart beats quicker. Why did she ever think this would be a good idea? How would she get through this night?

The click of her heels against the sidewalk must alert Jon to her presence, but he doesn’t look up from his phone when he says, “You’re late.”

Sansa has never been that type, never pulled out her phone to fake text at a party or in an elevator to appear busy. But it’s one of Jon’s habits. It doesn’t bolster her, to see that Jon’s uncomfortable. It only hurts. She doesn’t think there’s ever been a moment since they met where the two of them were in the same room and he wasn’t looking at her, in that—

_(“I don’t know what it is.” His eyes are melted chocolate. Her teeth biting into her lower lip, her cheeks on fire when he tucks a lock of hair behind her ear and says, “My center of gravity.”)_

—intense way of his. _I’m the one who should be angry._

“We’re supposed to be late,” she replies evenly. “That’s the plan.”

He doesn’t answer, except to tuck his phone into his back pocket, freeing one hand which he then extends to her. The other arm cradles a large foil covered Pyrex, which Sansa already knows is the pomegranate, ricotta, and farro stuffed butternut squash. Bran has come to count on it, their annual contribution to the Thanksgiving meal—well, Jon’s contribution, as she is an abysmal cook— and Sansa made sure to include it in the plan. (She’s sure Jon would have made it anyway. He never was forgetful, or cruel.)

Sansa stares at his extended hand, struck dumb, wondering if he really expects her to take it. Both of her arms are wrapped around the bag of wine bottles, holding it to her chest.

“I’ll take that,” Jon says, jerking his chin at the bag, still not looking at her. He doesn’t mention how unnecessary the gift is, how it goes against the plan because it’s out of the norm—they always brought the one dish, nothing more. But Sansa, acutely aware of how their contribution was really just his, needed to bring something, too. Jon doesn’t say any of that, although he must know it.

(He never was cruel.)

The gift bag is a pretty but cheap paper, sure to tear from the weight of the wine bottles. She should have gone with a canvas bag from home, but she wanted to be festive. Jon is waiting, a mean twist to his mouth she’s never seen.

“I got it,” she says. She refuses to owe him anything more.

“Five blocks?” _In those heels? _But he’s already walking, his body turned away from her as much as possible. Sansa notices his strides, longer and quicker than ever, an apparent cease to years of consideration for her. 

Sansa meets his punishing pace, unwilling to surrender anything.

* * *

It’s hard to look at her. Her beauty turns painful in this light, in the knowledge that it isn’t his to touch any longer.

One second is enough to see everything—more than enough. The russet shade she’s painted her lips in. The delicate shell of her ear, and the lock of hair curled behind it. She’s gotten a haircut. He can tell, even with her hair wrapped in an elegant knot at the nape of her neck. He should be grateful— he’s always been tempted by her hair, always eager to run his fingers through that copper silk—except the style bares the long, pale column of her neck in a way Jon cannot bear.

She’s wearing the diamond earrings he gave her for their third anniversary. He wonders if she’s wearing them because they are sure to be noticed by her mother. To sell the ruse.

The walk is long. Jon pauses at every intersection, waiting the half-second it takes for Sansa to catch up, before crossing—a habit he can’t kill, even in the empty suburban streets. Even when he tells himself he won’t do it at the next intersection. _She’s a grown woman. She can cross the street by herself. She doesn’t need me to protect her._

(Isn’t that what got them in this whole mess, anyway?)

The Stark house, an old and grand New England colonial, comes into view; familiar, a punch to the heart. Jon has always been welcome here. He realizes this may be the last time.

“I am doing this for my family,” Sansa says as they go up the cobblestone walk, followed by a shaky breath.

It isn’t overtly cruel, yet it’s one of the worst things she’s ever said to him. The Starks were never his family by blood, anyway. Jon stares at the pan in his hands. This is the furthest he’s ever felt from her.

“So am I,” he says, a lie. His own petulant stake on the family that isn’t his.

_You have no right, when it’s your own shitty family that ruined this. _

_Sansa ruined this, _he argues back, only just noticing that Sansa’s pulled back the brass wolf’s head knocker and announced their arrival. Even in his periphery he sees her struggling to hold up that damn bag with one arm, sees the second it starts to slip—and he reaches out, on instinct. His fingers hold the bag and his palm is on her coat. He feels the gentle back and forth of her stomach as she breathes, and it steals his own breath, leaves him angry and frustrated and near tears.

As soon as she’s holding the bag with both arms again, he pulls his hand back.

“Please don’t touch me tonight unless absolutely necessary.”

There’s a strangled, breathless quality to her voice—it shocks him into looking at her. She’s staring resolutely ahead, her breath coming quicker. _Panic attack. _

“Are you okay?”

She nods sharply. He doesn’t even register her words until then—and when he does, it’s a punch to the gut. He thinks of the Sansa of years and years past, Sansa on the heels of Ramsay. He thinks of Ramsay’s face breaking under his fist. He thinks of how his touch is now just as unwelcome.

“I’m sorry.” His chest feels tight, like there isn’t enough air. “I won’t touch you.”

“Don’t—be weird about it,” Sansa pants. “We still have to look like a couple… like ourselves.”

Every other word is an unnatural high note, her breaths coming quicker and near-hysterical. It _hurts_ him, raises that wilder part inside him that’s always needed to protect her.

“Then we should go back to the street,” he says as calmly as he’s able. “You need a minute to—”

“No,” she interrupts, and it all comes—

_(“No, I didn’t Jon I promise that I wouldn’t—”)_

—rushing back.

He struggles for patience. “If your mother sees you like this, Thanksgiving is already ruined.”

“Oh god,” she gasps, and Jon catches the straps of the gift bag as her arms give out. Mindlessly he settles it and the Pyrex on the ground before grasping Sansa’s shoulders gently and pushing her against the exterior of the house.

“Steady…” His hands move to cradle her face, his thumbs against her jaw, his fingers stretching behind her ears. She opens her mouth. She is moving on muscle memory, too.

“In through your nose,” he instructs her, biting off the _sweetheart _that usually follows. “One, two, three, four. Good. Now hold it. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven… Good… Exhale. One, two…”

Jon leads her through the breathing exercises several times, their eyes locked, until her breath comes smooth and she isn’t shaking. He releases her, feeling winded himself, and takes a step back for good measure.

“Please, Jon.” Her words are ragged, and they haven’t even stepped through the door. He has no idea how they’re going to get through the night. He watches the column of her throat moves as she swallows. Her eyes sparkle with unshed tears. “Please, don’t be kind.”

He turns on his heel and jams his finger onto the doorbell before bending low and picking up the tray and the bag of wine bottles. He knows without a doubt that no one’s heard the knocker, but he didn’t want to correct her. _Stupid. _

By the time Gendry opens the door, Sansa is standing beside him, all smoothed out like nothing’s wrong.


	2. a charade so bitter, so necessary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all of you clicking this chapter: 

“Don’t let them in!”

Despite everything, Arya’s call over Gendry’s shoulder lightens the weight on Sansa’s heart. When Arya appears, wriggling underneath Gendry’s arm that’s holding the door open, Sansa can’t help but smile.

“Sorry, guys, you’re too late. Turkey’s all gone.”

“Shut up,” Sansa retorts, feeling instantly better, and lunges forward to hug her sister.

Arya, for once, doesn’t put up a fight, surprising Sansa by returning the hug enthusiastically. When Arya pulls back, her sharp eyes rove over her then Jon, who’s standing a couple feet away chatting with Gendry. “You guys look weird,” she says, loud enough that Jon hears and stops talking, his face turning red and his gaze flitting to Sansa.

_“Ew,”_ Arya groans. “Is _that_ why you’re late! Gross! Why would you make it so _obvious?_ You two are absolutely disgusting!” 

She leaves the foyer, hands up in the air. “There she is,” Sansa jokes, for Gendry’s benefit.

“That’s a grown woman, everyone,” Gendry supplies, hands on his hips, his face glowing with a mixture of amusement and adoration as his eyes follow Arya. It’s not something Sansa’s capable of watching right now, especially with Jon standing beside her.

“Sansa!”

Her mother skips into the foyer with a shocking speed, and all Sansa sees is a cream sweater and an apron before she’s enveloped in her warm, rose-scented embrace.

_“Mom.” _Sansa sniffles, her eyes wet, and she’s suddenly terrified she won’t be able keep it together—not when her mother’s mere presence always had a way of tearing down her defenses. But her mother only clutches her tighter and rubs her back soothingly.

“Oh, Sansa, you’re so thin. Don’t worry. I’ll fix that.”

“Mom, stop,” and just like that she’s smiling again.

They hug for so long that Jon and Gendry pick up their stilted conversation in whispers, as if afraid to disturb them. This seems to amuse her mother, who chuckles and pulls away.

She dotes on Jon next, a bitter reminder of why this charade is necessary. She takes the dish off his hands, exclaiming over it as if they didn’t bring the same thing every year, and kisses Jon’s cheek.

“Well, you’re just in time,” she says. “Come in, come in! Ned’s in the basement… we’re already running low on wine in the kitchen… oh thank you Sansa, Jon, it was very kind of you to bring some…” 

With a not-so-subtle glance at her and Gendry, Jon moves to Sansa and peels off her coat. Sansa’s acutely aware of how careful he is not to touch her. She gives him as warm a smile as she can manage over her shoulder, and starts at the way his gaze flits to her mouth.

“You’ve always been a gentleman, Jon,” her mother says.

“Thank you, Catelyn.” His response is a bit stilted, and then, as if to cover it up: “Why don’t you go find your dad, Sansa, and I’ll take all this to the kitchen and bring you a glass of wine.”

Sansa doesn’t know how to react to that; it wasn’t part of the plan. Suddenly she realizes how woefully lacking the plan _is—_they didn’t decide much in the way of technicalities once they got past the door. It wouldn’t be the strangest thing for them to greet her father separately. But it doesn’t feel natural, either, and isn’t that the whole point?

But... she needs a break. It has already been so much.

“Sure,” Sansa agrees to Jon's proposition, taking her mother’s arm and leading her away before she can watch the two of them too closely. She’s always had a keen eye for discord.

* * *

Bypassing his initial plan not to drink, Jon gratefully takes the mixed drink Gendry offers him in the kitchen. It’s suspiciously caramel colored and normally that would put him off, but the beers are warm and that’s worse, and he _needs_ a drink to brace himself.

The mention of Ned threw him. Jon knew, of course, that Ned would be in attendance tonight— knew it in a rational, detached way—it’s his home, his Thanksgiving dinner, and he is a primary figure in the audience of their charade. But now…

Now, he’s starting to understand after tonight, Rhaegar will be the only father left to him.

Miraculously, Jon manages to maintain a semblance of small talk with Arya and Gendry as his thoughts bounce between Ned and Rhaegar, and Sansa, always Sansa at the center of everything. He tries to summon the courage to leave the kitchen to find her and her father. He half fills a wine glass with white for her, thinking, _now, I’ll go now. _

But his feet drag, Rhaegar’s litany of harsh words replaying through his mind, and he thinks, hopelessly, _this can’t be it. _

All too soon he loses his chance, as Sansa enters the kitchen flanked by her parents. Jon eyes go to her first, drawn by the sight of her out of her coat, in an emerald green sweater dress. It’s modestly cut with long sleeves and a hemline below her knees, and yet he wants to fetch her coat and cover her up—

_(“That’s mine, all of it, all of this, got it, baby?” The words utter nonsense whispered between her thighs, her leather black skirt hiked up, if the scrap of fabric that had been attempting and failing to cover her ass could be called a skirt. “No one else. No one else gets to see you like this. Mine.”) _

—because the dress is clinging to every curve.

“Could you stop looking at my sister like that? Our parents are _right there.”_

It’s Arya whispering in his ear, and Jon jumps before he sees the start of a smirk and realizes she’s teasing. He tries to smile back, then takes the wineglass and moves around the busy kitchen until he’s reached them.

“Here you go, baby. Hello, sir. Thank you for having me.” Once Sansa takes the wineglass, Jon extends his hand for one of Ned Stark’s firm handshakes, meeting his eyes despite how hard it is to do so.

“Glad you’re here, Jon,” Ned smiles warmly, before glancing at his wife, a touch of worry in that look. “Bit of an empty nest this year.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Catelyn responds, although she shares a look with her husband that communicates something unspoken. Jon resolutely does not look at Sansa.

“Robb isn’t here,” Catelyn explains after a moment, and Jon’s stunned—and disappointed in himself—that he didn’t notice.

“What do you know, the great Robb isn’t here and all of a sudden it’s an _empty nest.”_

This comes from Rickon, obscenely tall, who has apparently paused barreling through the pantry to poke his head into the kitchen. “Way to make a guy feel important.”

“Rickon! Get out of there! You’ll fill up before dinner.”

Rickon rolls his eyes at his mother. “Impossible.”

“Rickon. _Get out of there _and return to entertaining your guest before I forbid you from eating Thanksgiving dinner altogether. I _will_ force feed you spinach salad. And greet your sister and her boyfriend properly.”

_Her boyfriend._ Rickon’s monotone “hey Sansa, hey Jon,” glides over Jon’s ears.

“Where’s Robb?” Sansa asks.

“He’s at the Tyrells’ this year.”

“Soon we’ll all be at our spouses’ houses for Thanksgiving, Mom,” Arya teases from where she’s sitting cross legged on the countertop.

“Never,” Catelyn responds good-naturedly. “You will _all_ bully your spouses into eating here. Or you’re not my kids anymore.” As she passes she places a hand on his forearm. “I can always count on you, Jon.”

* * *

Sansa’s mother cares deeply about Thanksgiving. More than her own wedding anniversary, more than Christmas even—Sansa suspects she may like Thanksgiving more than her children's birthdays, though her mother would vehemently deny the accusation. But everyone knows the truth; Thanksgiving is Catelyn Tully Stark’s favorite holiday.

The house looks like a spread in Architectural Digest, decorated with copper and gold autumn wreaths, pumpkins, and the warm glow of candles and fairy lights. The aroma of the delicious food combined with her drained glass of white wine is dizzying—Sansa was too anxious to eat anything all day—and as she and Jon make the rounds, she finds herself wanting to grip his arm. For balance. 

“You look faint, dear,” Grandmother Minisa says, one leathery hand on her cheek while the other wags in Jon’s face. “You take good care of her, you hear me?”

“Of course, grandma,” Jon replies, and Sansa flinches at his use of the word. It will take years to untangle their lives, she’s realizing, perhaps years longer than it took to build it.

Yet, the alternative is worse. Unthinkable. A snip, a clean break, the cutting of everything that was him from her and her from him. As quickly as closing a door.

As they walk away from her Jon slips his arm, solid and strong and steadying, beneath hers. He stops there, just shy of touching her, giving her the choice. After a second of indecision, Sansa curls her hand around it. _Part of the act, _she tells herself. It would be strange not to.

They greet a myriad of relatives and friends. Uncle Benjen and his husband. Uncle Edmure and his wife. Brienne, who her mother always invites to Thanksgiving. Though everyone knows that the family nature of the holiday is the reason it’s her favorite, her mother always makes a point to extend her hospitality beyond her nuclear family. Extended family and key friends were regulars at the Stark house for Thanksgiving, and the occasional new guests. Sansa never knows who to expect, though the surprises are generally more pleasant than not.

Rickon, who is a junior in high school now—Sansa’s mind boggles at the thought, at the fact that she has to _look up _to speak to him now—has brought his girlfriend, a shockingly grown up act. Shireen is a sweet girl with mousy hair and a pretty, heart shaped face with one cheek half covered with a port wine stain. Jon seems to know her adoptive father, Davos, somehow and the two men spend a few minutes talking.

Aunt Lysa is already quite drunk and her bird-like grip is tighter than usual, as she traps Sansa with both hands and stories of Robin’s “triumphs”. And when Uncle Petyr leans in to kiss her, Jon is at her side, holding his arm out in a handshake to disguise keeping Petyr at arm’s length.

It all feel so crushingly, devastatingly normal, and Sansa wonders what it will feel like next year, if the holidays will ever be recognizable again.

* * *

When Sansa’s wineglass is emptied, Jon seizes the chance to return to the kitchen and replenish it. His drink has long since been obliterated, and besides, Jon thinks he might hide out in the kitchen until the turkey’s brought out. It might not be what Sansa wants, but—tough luck. He’s already greeted everyone, and he doesn’t think he can stand to hover in the living room for another half an hour or however long it will take. Not with Benjen’s clever eyes watching him. Not with Grandma Minisa calling him “grandson.”

So he extends a hand for Sansa’s wineglass, and although no one’s standing particularly close, he says just in case, “I’ll get you another one, baby.”

Sansa gives him a smile that’s just a smidge too tight. “That’s not necessary,” she says, and Jon’s not sure if she’s talking about the refill or the term of endearment.

“Well, I need a drink.”

He’s only taken two steps in the direction of the kitchen when he hears her following. He stops, and it’s painful to hear her pause half a heartbeat later. As if they’re still in sync.

“I’ll get you a drink if you need one,” he says without turning.

“I’ll come with you.”

He turns, hisses before he can stop himself, _“Please._ I need a minute.”

Her eyes blow open with hurt—and then it’s gone, her face shuttered over. He used to admire that ability in her. She’s never used it on him.

“You promised you would do this.” Her voice is so low he barely hears the words.

“And I am,” he says, daring her to say otherwise, and when she doesn’t, because she can’t, he continues adamantly to the kitchen.

Except—

Except, just then he sees Baelish peeling himself away from his wife, those shifty eyes that have always been repulsively fixated on Sansa noting the exact moment Jon stepped away from her. Baelish is walking towards them—towards her. He’s always loved that, loved swooping in on Sansa when she’s alone.

Something between a growl and a sigh escapes him, and in one quick motion he’s stepped behind Sansa, shielding her from Baelish’s gaze with his body, ushering her ahead of him towards the kitchen.

But Sansa’s stubborn by nature and his behavior leaves her confused, which only makes her more stubborn, and she’s squinting at him with that icy anger in her eyes, looking like she might say something to him, something that might blow their cover—and Jon can’t have that, he _won’t_ have it, not after enduring all of this.

So he ducks into the dark pantry, hoping for privacy at the very least, Sansa following a breath later.

“What was _that,” _she breathes, and Jon smells the sweetness of the wine on it. It makes him dizzy. Which makes him angry.

“Baelish,” he growls. It’s all he’s capable of saying.

Sansa inhales sharply, exhaling on a shudder, and every one of Jon’s instincts wants to wrap her up in his arms, to murmur sweet reassurances—

_(“Tell me if he’s ever hurt you, so much as touched you. If he has… if he has, Sansa, I’ll kill him.”) _

—in her hair.

“I don’t need you to do that anymore.” Though her voice is shaking it doesn’t undermine the severity of her words. “To protect me.”

Jon feels his mouth twist into a nasty parody of a smile. “Just doing my job.”

“It’s not your job anymore, that’s what I’m trying to say—”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

The words are harsh, and he’s _never_ spoken to her this way, but when will she stop biting at him? When will she _stop? _

“I meant my job _tonight,” _he continues, knowing whatever twisted pleasure he feels right now isn’t worth it. Still. It isn’t enough to stop him. “Pretending. Isn’t that what we’re doing here? Or did you forget?”

Jon can’t see her face in the dark, but he knows he’s stumped her, a rare triumph. Utterly hollow.

“You left a lot of things at my house,” she says, such a leap in subject matter that his neck aches from the whiplash, except he knows what she’s doing. He hurt her, and it’s her turn to return the blow.

And she does, oh she does—to be so ruthlessly cut from the home he built too, the home they built together, is a hurt like bruised ribs. Slowly building, freshly felt.

“And?”

_“And _I don’t want them in my space. Come get them.”

“Or what?” He’s dimly aware that he sounds like a second grader, but he’s completely incapable of finding better words.

“I don’t know—I’ll donate them—throw it out—I don’t know,” she says, words speeding up towards the end, and he hears her fingernails scratching at the wall—like a prisoner trying to escape. Only she’s probably looking for the light switch.

“But you should know you left some important things. Some of your mother’s books. And Ghost’s—um—his favorite squirrel.”

Jon swallows. Perhaps she thinks she’s being kind. But he isn’t in a place where he can accept it. He hasn’t left the space he’s in, the chasm of fury and bitterness and _oh, god, fuck, why did you say no? Why did you leave and why did you come back the way you did? Why couldn’t you just have told me the truth? Why couldn’t you give me a chance to save us? _

She’s looking at him; he can see the whites of her eyes even in the dark. He struggles to remember what they were talking about. Something about Ghost’s toy. “Were you going to throw that out too?”

“No,” she answers so quietly it shames him. “I would… I wanted to send it to you. But you didn’t exactly leave a mailing address.”

No, he didn’t manage to do that in the ten or so frenzied, furious minutes of packing the most random assortment of his and the dog’s things into a duffel bag.

“I can’t come to the house.” He’s deflated. Defeated by the thought of stepping into the home they shared when things are like this between them, when he is _this—_nothing— to Sansa.

“Mail what’s important,” he sighs. “Throw out the rest.”

“I—”

The door of the pantry jerks open, bathing them both in light. Meera stands silhouetted against the light of the kitchen. She blinks at them for a second before smirking and shaking her head.

“Oh man, Arya was right about you two.” She’s moving to close the door again. “Absolutely shameless.”

Sansa catches the door before it fully closes and slips out, leaving Jon behind.


	3. a hard-won prize

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's some wholesome stark & co. shenanigans (and more clues) to undercut the heaviness. enjoy! 
> 
> hope ya'll are okay reading about turkey day emotions during christmas season. angst is timeless. ✨

_Isn’t that what we’re doing here? Pretending._

Sansa presses a shaking hand to her mouth. _Pretending. _It’s news to her, that Jon is so good at it—a new layer of the man she’s known and loved, unveiled.

But then she remembers all those rambling, long conversations with Rhaegar. The bargaining she could hear even through closed door—Jon always closed the door when it was Rhaegar on the phone. The pleading note in his voice that made her sick. She remembers the nonchalant nature of his reports on his meetings with Ygritte.

Compromise after compromise. Protests collecting in her mouth until they spelled the end of them.

_Red hair, like yours. _The echo of the words, even in her memory, is a knife to the chest. The pain so sharp she can’t look at Jon for a second longer. 

As she steps out of the pantry, Sansa hopes she can skip through to the other side of the kitchen unnoticed and take a few minutes to herself in her dad’s home office, where no one will be. But she’s barely made it two steps when she sees Meera returning to Bran, who is parked by the breakfast nook. She sees Arya, Rickon, Gendry, and Shireen seated at the little table. They see her, too.

“Sansa,” Gendry waves her over. “Where’s Jon?”

Meera grins, hands on her hips. “Yeah, where _is _Jon?”

Normally, Sansa’s better than this at appearing unbothered. Though she’s sensitive and serious by nature, a lifetime of being sister to Arya, Robb, and Rickon has made it easy for her to shrug a little good-natured mocking off her shoulders. Sometimes, she even gives as good as she gets. But she can’t do it now, can’t think of something clever and dismissive to say. “Getting a snack,” she finally answers, the line falling flat.

But Meera doesn’t miss a beat. “Oh, I’m sure he was.”

Her cheeks flame. “Meera!”

“I caught them in the _pantry,”_ Meera tells the rest of the group, and they have a laugh and a groan at her expense, even Shireen who covers her mouth with her hand.

Arya shakes her head. “At least come up with something convincing, Sansa… Like Jon’s dumb enough to get a snack before Thanksgiving dinner.”

“Only Rickon’s that dumb.” Meera reaches over to ruffle Rickon’s hair, and he groans, the two of them shoving each other until Bran begs them to stop.

Sansa’s eye catches the moment Jon leaves the pantry, sees the shape of him moving to the back of the kitchen without looking in their—her—direction. She sees Arya say something quiet to Gendry, departing from the group. She sees Arya join Jon, sees them clink fresh beer bottles together. Moments later, she thinks she hears Jon’s laughter. Her fingernails bite into her palms as she tries to tamper down her envy, her yearning. Jon’s laughs are rare, hard-won things. Each one a prize. She will never draw one from him again.

Sansa looks at the group assembled at the kitchen table, feeling suddenly adrift. Gendry and Shireen, focused, looking at something on her phone. Meera and Rickon laughing about something, while Bran looks on them fondly.

A gentle touch on her elbow. She nearly jumps.

“Sorry.” It’s Jon, jaw tense. His eyes don’t quite meet hers. She’s fine with that.

They make room for her and Jon on the bench seat, Arya leaving her place to perch on Gendry’s knee. But it’s a tight squeeze with Rickon and Shireen. The hem of her dress rides up as she sits, baring a few inches of her knee. Innocent. Yet Jon holds his leg rigidly away from hers, their thighs separated by a breath, no part of them touching. Sansa wonders if he’s doing it for her sake or his.

He places a glass of wine on the table in front of her. Sansa shakes her head. “I’m okay.”

Sansa’s aware of Bran’s attention shifting to her, his keen eyes full of meaning. His brows arch. His lips form barely audible words meant just for her. “Are you…?”

She shakes her head, jerkily—

_(“Pregnant.” Two syllables holding the entire world. Uttered with complete reverence, Jon’s mouth against her bare, flat stomach. “Oh, Sansa. Thank you.”)_

—cheeks burning. 

Bran’s eyes on her are heavy. Arya’s looking at her too, gaze flitting between her and the untouched wineglass, and Sansa can’t handle that.

“I saw your dad out there, Meera. Does that mean he brought the pie?”

With the mention of the pie, Jon detracts everyone’s attention from her, and Sansa wonders if he caught Bran’s words. If he’s come to her rescue, yet again. The thought of that, of his pity, of her failure at the forefront of his mind _right now_ makes her heart clench to the point of pain.

“I’m _not_ talking to you, Jon. You haven’t come to the gym in two weeks.”

Gendry gasps. “Two weeks? That hasn’t happened since you had mono.”

_“Do_ you have mono, Jon Snow?”

“Who cares why Jon hasn’t been boxing,” Rickon groans. “Can we talk about the pie?”

“No, Rickon, not when Jon’s been ignoring my texts and I’ve been stuck with Rast as my partner, that _asshole._ Mance thinks you died.”

Bran comforts Meera with a hand on her shoulder. “He was probably busy. Right, Jon?” 

Jon clears his throat. “I _was_ sick. But I’ll be back in the gym in no time… I’m sorry. Rast didn’t bother you, did he?”

Sansa stares at her lap while Meera reassures Jon several times that Rast hasn’t done anything, outside of “being the worst asshole I’ve ever seen.” That flare of overprotectiveness—quintessential Jon.

_“Pie,”_ Rickon groans, and Arya grins and claps her hands together. “_Yes. _Let’s figure out what we’re going to do for the pie this year.”

“What pie?” Shireen asks softly, and Rickon shoots up and twists to face her, face shining with enthusiasm.

“Oh my god so it’s the best pie _ever,_ Shireen, I’m serious. You won’t even believe how good it tastes. Well, I hope you get to taste it,” he grumbles, energy deflating.

“Why wouldn’t I get to taste it?”

“Uncle Howland makes it, and he only brings one every year,” Bran answers. The memory of the first year, warm and blurred at the edges, comes rushing back. It used to be only the Starks and Meera—the Reeds being a constant presence for the holidays since before Sansa can remember—and Robin, until he stopped engaging with them. The first year Howland Reed brought the pie was the first year Sansa brought Jon to the Starks’ house for Thanksgiving.

Black turtleneck. Longer hair, curls loose. Wire rimmed glasses he’d wear for two years more until he’d switch to contacts— “more efficient.” The wild, new feeling of a hand holding hers. Jon’s perfect manners, his shy smile, the wonder—

_(“I…” Eyes wet. Lip trembling the slightest bit, an ache spearing her heart. Hands clinging. “I didn’t know family could be like this.”)_

—in his eyes. 

“We all went nuts the first year…” Bran continues, but his voice is a bit distant now, as if through cotton clogging her ears. “But it was very clear there wasn’t enough for everyone. So the adults backed off, saying the kids could share it.”

The memory of a much younger Rickon trying to pry her fork out of her hands, nearly breaking her fingernail, returns her to the world. “That didn’t work out so well,” Sansa smiles, ruffling Rickon’s hair. “Did it, little monster?”

Rickon groans and tugs away from her. “I’m not a baby anymore, _stop_ calling me that.”

“Always my baby,” Sansa croons in the voice she knows he loves and hates, watching him blush, and her heart feels—almost, impossibly—full. Except she feels Jon’s gaze on her, heavy, wanting. She fights the sudden burning in her eyes. _Nothing’s changed, _she reminds herself, vicious. _We were never going to have this, anyway. _

Arya finishes telling the story to Shireen. “Mom wanted to be fair, to stop the fighting…I think she wanted to do a raffle, remember that? In the end we’d only agree to compete for it. It became a tradition.”

“None of the adults care about it anymore, but we do,” Gendry continues.

“We’re adults,” Jon reminds him.

“Not when it comes to the pie,” Gendry quips. “You know what I mean. I’m pretty sure it’s the most important thing in Arya’s life.”

“It is.” Arya’s response is swift and gravely serious. “I won the first year, and… _god,_ it’s such a high…”

“Also important to note that she’s never won since,” Rickon grins, ducking quick when she leans over to punch him.

“I _will_ redeem myself,” she vows.

“So… How are we going to compete this year?”

They trade ideas—board games, card games, most of which are stumped by the time constraint of the impending dinner. When Shireen asks why they can’t wait to do this until after the meal—“it makes more sense since, well, you seem to take this seriously and only one person will win, won’t that put a damper on dinner”—Rickon tells her how, when Bran fell asleep five minutes after dinner one Thanksgiving and couldn’t be woken up, their mother made them cancel the contest since it wouldn’t be fair. With the pie split forty some ways they’d all ended up with a bite.

Rickon holds Shireen’s hands between his as he tells the story, wearing a sincere expression that would make Sansa elbow Jon and whisper, _how did Rickon get so grown up_, except she can’t do that. So she watches her feral little brother gone sweet, and suddenly she’s a bit misty eyed. 

“We can’t do charades again,” Gendry argues. “That’s how Jon and Sansa ended up with their three year streak.”

“Never again,” Rickon pretends to sniffle.

Shireen frowns. “Wait, I thought only one person could win.”

Bran smiles, meeting her eyes as he says, “Jon always shares with Sansa.”

And it’s unbearable. The web they’ve formed, red string connecting them all. Connecting everything to her and him.

(And isn’t it painful, tragic and ironic, that she can only see it now that it’s about to be cut?) 

Despite her self-preservation instincts, Sansa thinks back to that year. Jon’s crow of triumph when he won, his eyes instantly leaping—

_(“Do you like it, baby?” An answering moan, all she’s capable of. Dark of his apartment, lights never turned on as they headed straight for the kitchen, grabbing forks and sitting cross-legged on the floor. Bite of her waistband into her flesh. Sweetness on her tongue, flecks of buttery crust on her lips. Jon’s tongue, heady with the same flavor, licking into her mouth. “What’s mine is yours.”)_

—to hers.

_“So_ annoying,” Arya jibes. “Where’s your competitive spirit, Jon?”

Jon doesn’t answer straightaway, and Sansa wonders if he’s as incapacitated as she. If he’s stuck on the same memory. He seems to be all sharp edges tonight, and as the image of Ygritte’s vivid red hair fills her mind, she thinks again, _I’m the one who should be angry. _

“I brought it this year,” he finally speaks.

“Charades is the most fun though,” Meera says wistfully.

_“Nope._ We might as well hand Sansa and Jon the pie now. They’re too good at reading each other.”

“It makes sense,” Bran says, smiling softly at them, and Sansa can’t _bear_ this. “Out of all of us, they’ve been together the longest.”

“Longer than Robb and Margaery even,” Gendry adds, giving them a fond look, but all it does is remind her of those words formed around a mouthful of pie, _what’s mine is yours, _and again as a violinist played in the park, with a new and horrible layer of meaning. 

“How long?” Shireen asks shyly.

“Five years? Six?” It’s a punch, and Sansa tries not to react visibly. As if he doesn’t know.

“A little over six,” she corrects quietly. Six and a half. They’d met in spring.

“This would be the best year for charades though… since we’re all _coupled up.” _

“Didn’t think you had it in you, Rickon…”

The conversation devolves back to debating how they should compete, along with a healthy dose of teasing Rickon and by extension Shireen, whose face has gone red. Sansa takes pity on her; an adopted only child with Davos as company must be very unused to the banter and antics of the Starks in full force. And so when she says she has an idea in a barely audible whisper, Sansa shushes everyone and asks Shireen what it is, intent on supporting the girl.

“Well… since we’re all couples… we could do something based on that?”

Instantly, Sansa regrets coaxing the girl out of her shell. _I can back out. _She can make her excuses, help her mother set the table. But that wouldn’t be normal. Arya would follow her. Rickon wouldn’t let her live it down. 

“Nice,” Arya grins. “Something savage. Like, who could tell the nastiest habit of their partner, or something.”

“Or the _nicest_ thing,” Shireen balks.

“We could just do some kind of tournament on the Switch,” Jon offers, panic evident in his voice. Sansa feels it, too.

“We don’t have time for that. This will take five minutes.”

“But how are we gonna decide who wins?” Sansa crosses her arms over her chest, satisfied that she’s stalled the game. “None of us will be impartial.”

Rickon nods. “We need a judge.” 

Sansa considers downing the glass of wine that still sits in front of her while they debate the merits and downsides of fetching Robin from the basement to be the judge.

“Even _if_ he agrees to come, he’ll be a downer.”

“Robin wouldn’t know a thing about having a girl, anyway,” Rickon sneers, and Sansa chides him for mocking their cousin.

Every time Sansa thinks they’ve reached an impasse, they overcome it. They don’t want to involve one of the adults, but Shireen offers her father and they’re near agreement that it’s the best choice when a voice from the doorway interrupts.

“I’ll do it.”

Theon Greyjoy leans against the doorjamb, beer in hand, crooked smile in place.

“How long have you been there, Greyjoy?” The question comes from Jon, a bit rough; Sansa wonders if she’s imagining it.

“Just got done saying hi to everyone else. I was wondering where the fun crew was.”

“Robb isn’t here,” Arya warns, and Theon makes an exaggerated wounded face, placing a hand over his chest.

“I _know, _your mom already broke my heart.”

“Still wanna stay?”

He responds to Arya’s ribbing with a smirk, but Sansa sees something darker behind his eyes. “Better than that turkey jerky they’re serving over my house.”

Theon meets her eyes then, and Sansa lends him as much comfort as she can through a look. She knows how rough his relationship with his father is, and the holidays sharpen all that pain, as they tend to do.

“Jerky? Really?” Rickon asks, incredulous.

“Might as well be.” Theon holds up his hand to Rickon and Shireen for high fives, then leans over them, trying to hug Sansa before giving up. He’s still hunched over her a bit, his face close to hers and Jon’s—Jon, sitting statue still—when he says, “You look gorgeous.”

“Thanks.”

When Theon greets Jon his response is stilted, barely a response at all, a grunt pushed past clenched teeth. Theon meets her eyes, clearly puzzled, but Sansa looks away. 

“You don’t have a lot of time for your little contest,” Theon says to the group. “I’ll be your judge, but let me just say, this is… kind of a lame idea.”

“That’s not true,” Sansa protests, for Shireen’s sake, even if every part of her wants to agree, wants them to choose any other impersonal game.

“It _is_ true, Sansa. Why don’t you just play cards? I know you’re a romantic and all, but there’s got to be a part of you that thinks this sucks a—”

She kicks him underneath the table, and he shuts up then.

“It’s because it’s the first year we Starks are all part of a couple,” Bran explains. “Even if Robb isn’t here.”

“Robb’s part of more than a couple,” Rickon smirks.

Bran shushes him with a shocking ferocity and Arya smacks him up the head. Sansa looks between them, confused, heart sinking already, even if she doesn’t know why.

“What do you mean, Rickon?”

“Because they’re married… right, Rickon?” Jon supplies, and Sansa frowns. Is he in on this too, all of them keeping something from her?

_(Pretending. _He’s so much better at it than she thought.)

“Yeah, that’s it, whatever.” Rickon’s nodding quickly, rubbing the back of his head and glaring at Arya.

“I…” Sansa doesn’t believe them, of course. Grim curiosity makes her want to insist. But she doesn’t want to make a scene. She’s struck with a fierce, fast desire to go _home, _home as it was two weeks ago, under the duvet with Jon and Ghost. Home as it will never be again.

“Fine,” she breathes, weary. “Let’s play.”

“Great.” Theon’s sitting straight in his chair, suddenly enthusiastic about the game he was criticizing moments earlier. _Fantastic, he’s in on it too._ “Go ahead, lay it on me. Nicest, most special thing about your guy or girl. If I throw up, you win.”

“You don’t want a shot at the pie, Theon?” It’s half consideration, half last-ditch attempt to stop this game before it starts.

“Just promise me a piece if you win,” he winks, and Sansa feels Jon’s arm jerk beside her. His hand is a fist on his knee.

Platitudes wash over her, unbearably intimate looks into the lives of her siblings and their loved ones. _Bran’s Sunday routine is the most calming part of my week. Shireen’s really good at winning, like, any argument. Arya’s burnt toast has become just about my favorite thing to eat. _

A litany of praise is being sung in her mind, despite it all, despite everything. _Jon’s eyes in the dark. His sinful mouth. The size of his hands. Every delicious meal he’s made me. The way he refuses to write in brand new notebooks, afraid to ruin them. His collection of postcards, unmarked too. How he’d walk into a blizzard if Ghost wanted to go for a run. No one else has ever made me feel so safe. _

“You’re making me sick,” Theon jokes, and Sansa feels sick too, because it’s just her and Jon left. “Jon? What’s the nicest, sickly sweet thing you could say about Sansa?”

“Sansa’s amazing,” Jon says, quiet, voice low and heavy as a touch.

_“Okay…”_ Theon’s brows are furrowed, though his smile is a touch too amused. “Gotta be more specific there, bud.”

“Yeah, come on,” Shireen pipes up, eyes full of stars as she looks at them. 

In the heartbeat that follows, Sansa dares to look at Jon. She realizes she hasn’t looked at him since they sat down, hasn’t properly looked at him since the pantry. Since the harsh edge to his voice when he said, _pretending. _But she isn’t sure if he’s capable of pretending this much. (She isn’t sure if she is, either.)

He looks like a deer caught in the headlights, his lips parted. No words coming out.

“Why don’t we just skip me and Jon.” It’s a breathless rush. Seven pairs of eyes swing to her, all of them confused.

“I don’t understand.” Arya raises a brow at her. “Why?”

“Are you _forfeiting _the pie?”

“Don’t be silly. It’s just… if we go… well the rest of you don’t stand a chance.” It’s meant to be delivered as an airy, confident challenge. Instead, she sounds hesitant. Her breath is coming quicker. One, two. She can hear them, sharp and shallow and too-loud. _Not now, not while they’re all staring at me, please—_

His hand on her bare knee, near burning her with heat and the shock of being touched by him. His lips by her ear. Voice low, only for her. Another gust of heat, another. “Breathe. Steady. Breathe… count in your mind. Good.”

She feels her hummingbird heart slow, registers the attention still fixed on her, but it isn’t so burdensome now.

“Are you okay, Sansa?” Rickon’s eyes are wide, scared. “We don’t… we don’t have to play if it’s upsetting you.”

And that—that just about breaks her heart.

“Sansa’s just a bit stressed from work,” Jon says, and she realizes she hasn’t spoken. She’s quick to nod, to add, “Too much to drink before, I got dizzy.”

“Maybe you should get some air,” Jon suggests, gentle— except he isn’t looking at her still, except he isn’t offering to go with her, except he’s _pretending. _

Still she nods, rises. Jon slips off the edge of the bench, standing by to let her pass. He doesn’t follow.

* * *

Sansa doesn’t go outside, can’t stand the idea of walking through the congested living room to the patio. The path to the front door seems equally daunting. Instead she goes to the home office, where she’s enveloped by the darkness and quiet and that clean, wintry scent that always reminds her of her father.

A creak behind her. She turns whip-quick, expecting it to be Jon, heart in her throat. But it’s Bran, his chair stopped on the threshold until she waves him in.

He turns on the desk lamp on his way to her side. They sit in the weak golden light, in the thick silence. Sansa doesn’t mind, but she feels something else coming. The calm before the storm.

“Are you okay?” Bran asks, so quiet and solid-calm it instantly disarms her. They’ve always had a special connection, she and her thoughtful brother.

“No,” she whispers, hoarse.

“Jon too?”

It isn’t quite a question. He half knows, half doesn’t. Sansa nods, a sharp jerk. “Please don’t tell Mom.” The words spill, desperate and fast, as the guilt of the admission takes over; needless, as Bran would never do such a thing anyway.

He nods. Sighs. Sansa sees his perpetually calm expression shaken, and guilt gnaws at her once more. _I don’t want any of them to suffer too._

Impossible, she already knows. They already love him, irrevocably. They too will feel his loss.

“But you two will be okay.”

Again, not a question; an edge of hopefulness and desperation in equal parts. But she can’t, _won’t, _give him false hope.

“I’m not so sure, Bran.” Something heaves in her chest. A hole is left behind.

“He loves you. You love him.” He blinks at her with those slightly owlish eyes and Sansa’s struck by how young he is, how _good, _a boy still who believes in love. A boy who’s in love himself, for the first time, with his childhood friend.

“I know,” Sansa answers, miserable, holding back the rest. Bran isn’t the one who should hear it, ever, despite his wisdom and maturity. It wouldn’t be fair to him. Or to Jon.

_It’s the truth, anyway. _Jon loves her. She loves him. That was never in question.

“Love’s enough,” Bran says, as if reading her mind, a disquieting ability of his. _“Your_ love’s enough.”

_It’s not, _she wants to tell him, but she doesn’t. A part of her hopes she’s wrong.


	4. smudged blue ink

Jon watches Sansa’s back as she leaves the kitchen, sees the edges of her still trembling. _My fault. _His hands are tight fists on his knees. He should have said something passable, shouldn’t have left it to her to intercede.

Except, when Theon asked—_what’s the nicest, sickly sweet thing you could say about Sansa?_—every answer was carved out of his heart, could not possibly be spoken in that bright kitchen. Every mundane word was attached to her in the most unbearably intimate, woefully wonderful way. _Sickly sweet—_her hazelnut coffee, loaded with cream and sugar, the taste of her mouth when he kissed her goodbye. Mornings— the whole wheat cereal she always kept stocked for him, knowing how he relied on it, knowing he didn’t have a head for that sort of thing. Routine— her cold feet digging into his shins as they fell into sleep. Bed— the sight of her pale legs tangled in the snow white duvet.

It went on and on, mercilessly, a web he’d never be free from. Each memory a sweetness he’d never taste again. Her brilliance. Her thoughtfulness. Her long fingers twined through his. The taste of her cunt. 

(The thing he’s done, the burning hole in her coat pocket. _What I’m really thankful for.) _

He could only sit there, frozen, while she made excuses for him until it sapped her strength. Until she left. Bran followed seconds later. With the contest thoroughly ruined—Jon knows he should feel guilty, but he can’t fully manage to, unable to shoulder another burden— the others disperse. Rickon wants to show Shireen his gaming setup in the basement. Arya and Meera stand by the drinks counter, the latter sharing her bartending skills by whipping up a drink—Arya takes a sip, winces, “I said nothing fancy!” As Davos passes through, he ropes Gendry into a long conversation about the local real estate.

When it’s just him and Theon left, Theon shrugs his shoulder at the door, half-grinning like he always seems to be. “Want a smoke?”

Jon quit smoking six months after meeting Sansa. Her concerns over his health got to him, and besides, she was already sweeter than that sweet pull of nicotine. He hasn’t touched a cigarette in a long time.

Except—

Except that night two weeks ago. Tears blurring his vision, season’s first true chill touching his bones. Fingers shaking around the cigarette after a desperate run to the cornerstore. That night, hours from morning, waiting for her, looking for her, heart throbbing with rejection and worry. 

After a moment, Jon nods and returns Theon’s smile as fully as he’s able. He feels bad for slighting him—even if his mind’s been going wild with the possibilities of Theon making a move on Sansa once he knows she’s available. Jon knows—is nearly absolutely sure—it will happen. Theon’s always liked her, as much as a decent man can allow himself to like his best friend’s sister with a long term boyfriend.

What he doesn’t know is how Sansa will respond—and this is what makes his stomach wobble, makes him want to glare at Theon. Turns his hands into fists. Sansa and Theon have a good friendship, by far Theon’s closest friendship to any of the Starks besides Robb. Theon’s womanizing ways have drawn Sansa’s derision in the past, but Theon hasn’t been that way in a couple years; he’s gone more quiet, more serious. The thought of Theon asking her out—holding her—the thought of _any _man holding her—

_You have no right,_ he reminds himself as he calmly follows Theon to the patio. The sea of faces they pass swim together, indistinguishable. _You _lost _that right._

A better man would wish her happiness, would wish she find someone decent and kind. And he _does _want that for her, he thinks frantically, control over his thoughts slipping. Except picturing it puts his teeth on edge, sets his stomach on fire. Except—

_I wanted to marry her. I wanted to die with her._

The brisk cold is welcome relief. Jon takes the cigarette and lighter Theon offers, takes a long, shuddering pull. Theon chuckles, “Yeah, you looked like you needed that.”

“Thanks.”

“So, what gives?” There’s a touch of something more than casual curiosity in Theon’s voice. Jon sighs, thinking of all the lingering looks on Sansa’s back, all the too-expensive presents Theon would give on her birthday.

“You know… stress of the holidays. Family.”

“Your dad?”

“Yeah.” It feels good to say something close to the truth. Jon hasn’t actually spoken to Rhaegar in weeks. But as he thinks detachedly of all those missed calls and ignored text messages, he doesn’t feel the usual sinking dread. He feels nothing.

Theon heaves a sigh. “Tell me about it. Yara’s at her girlfriend’s this year, and… I just couldn’t do it without her. Balon came in hot. I had to get out of there.”

“I’m sorry.” He means it, too. Jon’s lucky enough to be spared invitations to the Targaryen Thanksgivings; by now, Rhaegar knows Jon will attend the Starks’. Jon wonders what next year will look like, what all the holidays will look like from now on.

“Yara gets to get away… if things go well with this girl she may never come back, you know?” Theon’s fast words pause only to allow him to pull on the cigarette; he blows out smoke as he continues. “I want that. Something real. Getting to be part of a family. Hell, _making_ a family, someday.”

Jon obliterates nearly half the cigarette in one pull. _What the fuck did I do to deserve this? _“You’ll find it.”

“Thanks, man. I hope so. _You_ did. You don’t know how lucky you are to be with a woman like Sansa.”

It raises something within him. Defensiveness, spite. Regret. “I _do_ know.”

“It’s rough out there,” Theon continues, as if he hasn’t heard, and Jon wonders if he spoke the words aloud at all. If he whispered them. “I can’t go back there. Fuck. Don’t know what I’m gonna do for Christmas.”

_Neither do I. _“You’ll always be welcome here,” Jon says, ignoring the hurt.

Theon smiles, claps him on the back. “So will you.”

* * *

After that, Jon can’t stay smoking on the patio with Theon Greyjoy much longer, choking on irony and the taste of ash. He has to find Sansa. His feet are on the edge of a cliff, on the cusp of something, and he _has _to find Sansa.

He finds her in her father’s dimly lit office. “Bran,” he says without thinking. “Can you give us a minute?”

He doesn’t know what he’s going to say yet; the words will roll off his tongue. Maybe he’ll just ask her if she’s okay. Maybe he’ll drop to his knees again.

“Of course,” Bran responds immediately, but Sansa halts him from wheeling out of the room by placing a hand on his.

“Wait.” Her face is the definition of resolve—set mouth, slightly red eyes. Jon’s stomach sinks with realization. Brave Sansa, never one to run from—

_(“You shouldn’t have to earn his love. You’re enough.” Summer sky eyes shining. Healing hands holding his. A warrior’s strength in her spine. “I love you. I love you, Jon Snow. And I think you love me.”)_

—the truth.

“Earlier… what are you all hiding from me? I want to know, Bran.”

Jon sees the exasperation underneath Bran’s smooth expression. “It’s… it’s nothing, Sansa.”

“Bran…”

“Trust me. It’s not important right now.”

Sansa’s shoulders rise to her chin. “If everyone knows, it’s bound to come out. I don’t really want to hear whatever it is on the dinner table. Rickon’s terrible at keeping secrets.”

“It’s not a secret,” Bran sighs. “Robb just wanted to tell you himself.”

Fuck.

“Margaery’s pregnant.”

_Fuck. _

Something moves beneath the surface of Sansa’s skin, tide beneath the glacier. Twitch of an eyelid, jolt of a finger, slightest quiver of her bottom lip before she masters it. Jon sees it all, watching her closely. Aching.

“Oh.” A low whoosh of breath. Then, a rising, tremulous wave. “Wow, that’s—so, _so_ wonderful.”

She chews on her lip, eyes darting back and forth now, looking at neither of them. “I’m sorry for making you tell me. I guess I just thought… I don’t know. I hope I haven’t ruined—” Her voice breaks. “Robb’s plans or anything.”

Jon surges forward, moving on muscle memory, needing to hold her—then, a vicious pump of the brakes, clench of his fists, to hold himself in place. To keep himself from touching her.

There’s no need for him to comfort her, anyway. Bran’s holding his sister’s hand, telling her things Jon can’t hear through the buzzing in his ears. 

When Bran leaves, Jon expects Sansa to follow. He’s mildly surprised when she doesn’t move an inch. He wonders if she smells the cigarettes on him; she has to, sitting so close. If he stretches out his arm, he could brush her hair, knock it out of that prim, pretty hairstyle and watch it cascade down her back. 

Her voice is quiet when she finally speaks. “Did you know?”

“No.”

“Robb didn’t tell you?”

He doesn’t want to tell her he hasn’t spoken to Robb—or anyone—since that night. Two weeks of silence. “Of course not. He wouldn’t tell me without telling you.”

Her mouth twists; sorrow, shaking. “That’s kind.”

He hasn’t been, he realizes, just as she asked of him outside the door. “Just the truth,” he responds, gruff. “I’m sure Robb and Margaery wanted to tell us together.”

“I wonder if they had some kind of special announcement planned.” Jon already knows that’s not the case. Sansa does, too, but if she wants to pretend, he’ll let her.

It turns out, she doesn’t. “Or do you think it’s because it’s… us. _Me.” _

_Us, _he wants to insist. _Say it again._

“Probably,” he concedes. She seems to want the truth right now, and he can give her that. But the steady beating of his heart wants to give her more, something short of grabbing her and chanting _us, us, us._

He settles on telling her, “But they’re wrong. You can handle it.” 

Instantly, Jon knows he’s said the wrong thing. Her gaze shutters over. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Maybe I _would,”_ he swallows on a desert dry throat, “if you’d told me the truth.”

She blinks slow. “Are you going to hold that against me now?”

“Of course I am.” How can he not, when her foolish attempt at selflessness was the reason he lost her? “You shouldn’t have lied about something so important.”

“Maybe you should have been paying better attention to me instead of your father.”

“I _never _cared about him more than you. It—not even _close,”_ he ends on a sputter. 

Wry smile. _Too late, _it says. “Could’ve fooled me.”

He shakes his head, wondering dimly, _how did we get like this? _“You shouldn’t have lied,” he repeats, voice weak to his own ears. “Like we’re lying now. Why are we _doing this,_ Sansa?”

“For my mom… for my family. You know that.”

_Her family. _Bitter anger coats him like mud. “So, what? You’ll tell them next week? The week before Christmas? How’s that any better?”

What little color is left in her face disappears, her nails bite into her palms—but Jon knows better. This can’t be news to her. She must have thought about this, agonized over it.

And decided to call him anyway.

“Why… why’d you make us go through this?” Control, slipping, gone. “Even if you tell them _tomorrow,_ Sansa, then it’ll be Christmas that’s ruined. And then what was the point of_—this?_”

She lifts her chin, looks him dead in the eye. Formidable, unwavering, even with her quivering mouth and red eyes.

“Then why’d you go along with it?”

He falters. Holds his tongue, racks his brain for anything to say so as not to speak the truth; which is, for her, he’d go along with anything.

“I…”

A knock on the door saves him, wrecks him.

“There you are,” Benjen says when he’s opened the door a crack. “Time to eat.”

* * *

_Lying. _It’s worse than pretending, and Sansa didn’t think it could get worse. Worse because of the blame Jon seems intent on piling on her, when all she wanted was to let him have what she couldn’t give him. Worse because he’s right.

Worse, impossibly, than having to hear those two words—_Margaery’s pregnant—_and the collapse in her chest, that quiet hollow. _Oh. _

(But nothing’s worse than the following quick, instinctual jab, the well of guilt and sadness and _not-enough. _Failure. _My fault. _Nothing’s worse than the bottomless pity in Jon’s eyes, the way it made her shrivel up inside.)

She lied then, and they’re lying now, and it’s unbearable to admit he’s right. That they’ve done this—stood across from each other for these unending hours, watching each other fall apart at the seams, pretending, _lying—_for nothing.

Except—

Except for the way his eyes went soft and hopeful, at the end. The way his full lips parted. Before Uncle Benjen opened the door.

He’s staring at them. Taking in her tight grip on the armrests of her chair, Jon’s uneven breathing, the unnatural space between them. Sansa wonders what he sees.

“Thanks, Uncle.” She smooths her hands over her dress, feeling the sting of the half-moons she’s cut into her palms as they brush over the fabric. She smiles stiffly and makes to go past him when he says, “Sansa, hold back a minute.”

He nods at Jon, who seems all too pleased to blow past them both. She closes her eyes for a moment; curses her luck.

“You two okay?”

“Yes.” It’s automatic, too-fast, but Uncle Benjen only gives her a sympathetic look.

“Take it easy, yeah? Nothing’s worth it in the end.”

She swallows the lump in her throat. “Sure. You’re right, Uncle.”

A smile unfurls on his face. He shakes his head fondly, touching a hand to her cheek for a moment before pulling away. “You two remind me of Ned and Cat back in the day. Not in looks mind you… nothing that simple. Everyone says you look like Cat but that’s just your coloring. I think you favor your father.”

Sansa almost smiles. “I did get his nose.”

He laughs. “I wouldn’t go that far.” 

“I agree with you, by the way. Robb’s the one who’s Mom’s twin. Even Arya looks more like her than me… those big eyes.”

“You’re all beautiful,” he says, and Sansa thinks she’s about to be spared when he says, “But that’s not important. You and Jon remind me of your parents in a different way. The way you care about each other. Fight for each other.” He fixes her with a look. “They struggled too, you know.”

Her eyes sting. She bites the inside of her cheek, uses every ounce of her strength to keep from crying. “Is there something you wanted, Uncle?”

“Yes…I found something.”

A thin, carefully wrapped package, kraft paper bound in twine. He nods, encouraging her to open it, and Sansa knows what’s within when she’s halfway through.

Frayed, thinning cardstock, yellowed with age. A faded picture of the Museo Picasso on the front. The words _Malaga, 1966 _handwritten on the back, blue ink smudged.

She recognizes the handwriting, knows it well. “How did you get these?” Her voice is hushed, awed. She thought Lyanna left them all to Jon.

“I found this stack in one of the boxes she left me… bundled up in a sweater, if you can believe it.” Wistfulness touches his voice, his face. “She always was full of surprises.”

“Jon…” Tears choke the rest of her words, but this is the one time she’s allowed to be emotional, looking at Lyanna’s postcards. “He cares about preserving them so much… preventing smudges and tears… there’s this little box, and each postcard is wrapped in tissue paper.”

Jon took the box with him when he left, of course. One of the first things in his duffel bag—not thrown, not shoved, but carefully tucked into the outer zip pocket. She lets out a laugh, wonders if she sounds hysterical, but Benjen—completely misunderstanding—only gives her an knowing look.

“Everyone deals with grief their own way. If it were me…” He fixes a musing expression on his face and Sansa feels ten again, playing with her favorite uncle as he struggles to come up with new games to amuse her. It’s a warm place to be. “I think I’d travel to all those places, to feel what she felt. Take the postcards with me, write my own memories on each one.”

Sansa’s shaking her head before he’s done. “Jon would never do that. He never writes on them.”

“Well.” He shrugs. “Thought you could give it to him. Maybe for Christmas.”

Her heart breaks in two. “No—no, Uncle… you do it…”

“Nonsense. I’m just an old friend of his mom. You’re his girl. He’d be happy to have it regardless, I’m sure, but… I think it should come from you.”

Helpless, Sansa nods. Jon _has_ to get the postcards, that much she knows, though of course she won’t be able to give them to him on Christmas. She resolves to give them to him at the end of the night, perhaps when they’re walking to their cars. “Can you just hold onto it for me until the end of the night? I don’t have anywhere to put them… wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

Uncle Benjen smiles and agrees, curling an arm around her shoulders and ushering her back into the light, heat, and noise.

The delicious aroma of the food is ten times as strong with all the dishes uncovered and out of the oven, being arranged on the dining room table. Sansa watches Jon flit between the kitchen and the dining room with the speed of lightning, moving twice as many plates as anyone else—

_(“I’ve never belonged anywhere.” His face buried in her neck. “Until you. Until this.”) _

—always trying to be helpful, always desperate to prove himself.

As he does every year, her father waits until everything is set before yelling, “Turkey’s ready!” Everyone responds with a cheer, veterans ushering the newcomers to stand by the walls, making room for what’s to come.

From where she’s standing, Sansa has a glimpse of the kitchen. She can see them preparing before they emerge. She watches Jon take his position with Dad and Rickon, the three of them bending down to Bran’s level. Each of them has a hand on the platter with the glistening, gigantic turkey. They carry it into the dining room together while everyone claps.

Jon’s smile is like the sun, like he’s forgotten himself, and suddenly Sansa feels sick, she needs air, she absolutely _has_ to get some air—

She whirls too quickly and crashes into a broad chest. She looks up and finds Jaime Lannister smirking at her.

“Doctor Stark.” He bends to kiss her cheek in greeting. “Very good to see you.”

“You too. Are you here with Brienne?”

He winks at her. _“You_ know it. _I_ know it. But she doesn’t quite know it…”

Sansa can’t help a laugh. “How’d you manage that?”

“Well, she took pity on me, poor Dane in the States.”

“Clever,” she says, her eye past him on the door to the patio.

“Yes, I’m trying to make her charity last to the new year… Sansa?”

She blinks, focusing on him again. “Yes. Sorry. Excuse me, I need some air.”

Jaime quirks a brow. “They just put the turkey. You sure about that?”

“It’ll take everyone a few minutes to top off. I’ll be quick.”

“I’ll try to save you some bird,” he teases, missing the mark just a bit with his odd word choice, but Sansa finds it amusing anyway. “Oh, here. I just came back from a smoke—fucking freezing.”

He pulls off his jacket and drapes it over her shoulders, disappearing into the dining room before she can respond.

As she walks away, she catches Jon’s eye. He’s far from the turkey now, leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. The fire in his eyes halts her feet. He’s _glaring, _jaw set. Sansa feels her cheeks flush; she resumes her path to the patio, twice as fast. She wonders if he knows how angry he looks.

_Idiot, _she thinks, but there’s no venom in it. He’s always been such an idiot.

* * *

Jaime Lannister. Jon knows him—a pharmaceutical rep from some Nordic country. Tall and golden, smiling and self-assured, draping himself over Sansa, then covering her with his jacket.

His feet move without consulting him, following her to the patio. He opens and closes the sliding glass door in two jerky, quick motions, and then it’s the two of them in the chill.

“What the hell was that?”

“Jon Snow.” Her voice is a thin sheet of ice, hard and brittle. “You have _no _right.”

Jon registers the thundering in his ears, the truth in her words. Still. “Do you know what this looks like? You standing here in his jacket?”

“It’s just a jacket.”

“I can’t believe you’re doing this again.” His chest feels tight, his breath getting away from him. “You have to—_think _about how things look.” 

“Me? _Me?_ Was I the one having completely inappropriate dinners that should have been daytime meetings? Was _I_ the one coming home smelling like someone else’s perfume?”

He sucks in a breath. “I _begged_ you to come along. You said it was okay. You _kept _saying it… always said you had to work.” _With Jaime Lannister._

“Keep it down,” she hisses. She keeps glancing at the door and Jon remembers it’s glass, but at the moment he can’t find it in himself to care. “People can see us. They might be able to hear us.”

“Is there something going on between you and Jaime Lannister?”

She releases a puff of air; not quite a sigh, not quite a laugh. “It’s been _two weeks. _Is your opinion of my character so low?”

It’s a slap. One he deserves.

“You _know_ Jaime,” she continues. She’s always been good at that, at running with a lead. “He’s one of my suppliers at work. And Brienne knows him—”

“I don’t care how _Brienne_ knows him.”

“Maybe you should care.” She’s trying to be angry like he is, he can tell, but her voice shakes like a leaf. He’s always hated that, how her vulnerability instantly steals his fire. “Considering he’s completely, ridiculously in love with her?”

Jon blinks. “Oh.”

“It’s just a jacket.” Her shoulders hunch, curving inwards. A shield against the cold. Collapsing in on herself. It hurts Jon to see. _I only ever wanted to hold you up._ “Can you say the same?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hold on angst warriors, hold on... we're almost there!! I promise!


	5. what I'm really thankful for

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the wait angst warriors! I was moving, and just got settled! Can't wait to hear your thoughts 👀

“This year has brought many blessings, but the things I’m thankful for stay the same.”

As always, Catelyn has begun the tradition of going around the table and saying what she’s thankful for—after Arya and Bran get the chance to give their annual speech about the true history of Thanksgiving and the injustices performed against the Native Americans. Although it originally started as a rebellious act by the siblings when they were much younger, Catelyn and Ned have long since embraced the speech, commending their children on being compassionate and well informed. Now all those present at the Stark Thanksgiving dinner are used to sitting silently through the speech, and Jon always watches newcomers’ reactions to it—“a real litmus test of a person’s quality,” Sansa once said.

This year, besides Shireen and Davos—who nod attentively throughout the impassioned speech— the only newcomer is Jaime Lannister, and Jon has no desire to look at him.

He looks at Catelyn instead, who stands at the head of the table, wineglass in hand.

“I’m thankful for my babies, always. And my Ned, the rock my life was built on.”

So begins the chain. Everyone says something similar, counting their spouses or children or parents. There’s the occasional joke—an attempt by Edmure, another by Benjen’s husband whose name Jon can never remember. Something Davos says sends the entire table into an uproarious laugh. Rickon says he’s thankful for the skating rink, and everyone laughs until Shireen brightly adds, “because it’s next to the library. That’s what I’m thankful for, the library.” Then the two smile softly at each other.

Arya jokes, “Gendry’s deodorant.” With complete sincerity shining in his eyes, Gendry responds, “I am thankful for absolutely everything about you.”

She smacks his arm, then hides her face behind a napkin. Everyone is half-laughing, half-sniffling at their antics, and Jon chances a glance at Sansa. Blue eyes misty beside him. Resolutely avoiding his gaze.

They continue down the line. Jon’s prepared for this, of course—it was one of the first things he thought about after Sansa called. He settled on a heartfelt but vague, “I’m thankful for this generous feast, for the love and family that made it possible.”

But the way they’re seated has Sansa going before him, and he wonders if this will change anything. If she will say something more intimate—

_(Her speeches, always a line for her family, and then: “I am thankful for Jon’s presence in my life. You make me feel safe, something I didn’t even recognize until you.” “Jon, the way you love me is a lesson in how to truly love.” “I love Jon’s good heart and his good hands, always trying to serve and protect others.”)_

—to match—

_(His speeches, always a line for her family, and then: “Your heart, your mind, your exquisite beauty.” “I am thankful for every day I get to spend with you.” “My life was dark before you, Sansa, empty and meaningless. You brought color to my life. You gave me meaning.”)_

—the previous years.

(Then there’s the other thing he’s done, but he can’t think of that now, or he’ll lose his nerve and undo it all.)

Soon, Sansa’s standing beside him, and despite everything Jon finds himself noticing and then trying to ignore the curve of her ass mere inches from his face.

“I am thankful to be here, with my family. I love you all so much.”

Jon watches her closely, watches her pause, and he thinks she’s about to sit now.

Then—

“I’m thankful for Jon. I—I…”

Another in a long line of broken statements. Jon doesn’t know if he can bear one more. He watches her chest swell, fall.

“I love you.”

Breath stolen. Heartbeat stalled. Jon tries to suck in a lungful and barely manages to, feeling winded, like he’s run a minute mile, and he’s never felt so many eyes on him before, all of them kind and oblivious. _It’s nothing, _he tells himself. Control, slipping. _She did just say she loves everyone else at the table pretty much. _It would have been strange, suspicious, unnatural, for her to exclude him.

Except—

Except, she could have said anything else. Hope blossoms in his chest, unbearable.

_I love you. _

_“Love,”_ not “loved”—

_Except she couldn’t say “loved” in front of her family, could she? _Except they’re pretending, _lying—_

—aren’t they?

Sound of a cleared throat, awkward in the silence. Jon realizes it’s his turn, that everyone’s waiting. 

Clumsily, he gets to his feet. “I’m thankful for this incredible dinner, for the love and family who made it possible. Thankful to be a part of it. Sorry.” He’s forgotten to raise his glass and does it now; too late, oddly jarring. “Sansa… I love you too.”

He knows he should look at her, so he does. She is looking back, a placid smile fixed on her face; meaningless, distant. He wants to tell her he isn’t performing for them, that he’d look if they were alone, that he’d tell her he loves her in a whisper so low only she’d hear it—

“They’re usually way cheesier,” Rickon stage whispers to Shireen, creating a ripple of stifled laughter.

“A bit lackluster compared to previous years, guys,” Arya teases. “And I’m thankful for that. Seriously.” 

“Stop it,” Catelyn reprimands. “That was lovely.” Jon meets Catelyn’s gaze and gives her as wide a smile as he can manage.

The remainder of the Thanksgiving declarations pass without event, and everyone releases a unanimous sigh of gratitude when they start to eat.

_I love you._

The words pound through his mind, muffling the noise of conversation and silverware scraping against dishes. When Roslin is finished with the sweet potato casserole—Sansa’s favorite—Jon looks to Sansa and waits for her slight nod before scooping a helping onto her plate.

He serves her, then himself. He is surrounded by raucous laughter and the pleasant, homey sounds of eating and conversation. Everyone is preoccupied; no one is looking at him or expecting anything of him, he doesn’t have to lie or pretend. This is the most peaceful he’s felt all night. 

Except Sansa said _I love you. _

Three words that won’t let him have peace. The meal passes quickly, a blur of short conversations and delicious forkfuls of food he shovels into his mouth, and Sansa’s declaration playing over and over in his mind like a mantra; _I love you, I love you, I love you. _He can barely register anything beyond it, except Sansa’s untouched plate, which worries him.

Lysa is aware of it too, leaning forward across the table to ask Sansa with false sweetness if she’s become a vegetarian “like your silly brother, or is there another reason you’re not eating?” Jon feels Sansa stiffen, watches from the corner of his eye as she pointedly stuffs a forkful of turkey into her mouth.

Baelish gives Sansa a smile meant to be apologetic but only grates at Jon’s skin, pulling Lysa’s wineglass out of her reach. “I think you’ve had enough, dear.”

Lysa glares at her husband. “She doesn’t need you to step in for her.”

Without thinking, Jon takes Sansa’s hand in his own—small, cool, long-fingered, heart-breakingly familiar—and places their joined hands on the table. “No, she doesn’t.”

Baelish glares at him, and Jon feels that familiar itch up his back, the urge to punch him in the face. Lysa’s eyes drop to their joined hands on the table. “You two _are_ lovely.” She gives them a smile that’s all teeth. “Seven years is a long time. When’re you planning to tie the knot?”

“That’s enough, Lysa—”

“Yes it _is_ a long time, Aunt.” Sansa’s eyes glint with a cool anger Jon recognizes. “Isn’t that how long you recommend _breastfeeding a child?_ Because I can tell you, as a doctor, it’s not at all healthy.”

Sansa’s voice drops to a hiss so that no one who isn’t paying attention hears; still, it shocks Jon. Her cheeks are flaming red, as if she can hardly believe her own audacity.

Lysa’s eyes go dark, all trace of mirth gone from her grim face. “What do _you_ know about being a mother?”

“Lysa!” 

Sansa’s hand has gone limp in his. Lysa glares at Baelish one last time before standing up and stalking off from the table. Several curious pairs of eyes follow her dramatic retreat, but Jon only has eyes for Sansa.

“Are you alright?” he asks quietly.

“Of course I am,” she snaps. Jon releases her hand, and Sansa instantly snatches it back. _She did ask me not to touch her tonight_, he thinks bitterly.

But Baelish makes him forget, makes him irrational. He has never managed to marry reason with the fierce instinct to protect Sansa. If only he _had,_ he thinks miserably… _No._ It wouldn’t have been enough to save them.

The remainder of the meal passes without incident, except for when Catelyn rises to make a quick round and titters over Sansa’s full plate. Sansa makes a show of eating then and only then. Her plate remains untouched once her mother’s resumed her place at the far head of the table.

“You should eat something,” Jon tells her when he notices the bottoms of dishes getting scraped.

“I’m fine.”

He doesn’t believe it—he isn’t fine, either. But _he_ isn’t dizzy from wine, _he_ hasn’t needed air twice tonight. A terrible thought crosses his mind; her, behind the wheel, drunk, dizzy.

“You should eat something,” he insists, then adds in a whisper. “So you can be good to drive home.”

She looks on him fully, and oh the power of that blue, blue gaze. “I’m not _drunk.” _

“I’m just asking you to be careful.”

“It _sounded _like you were accusing me of being a drunk driver.”

Quick, angry, thoughtless. “You don’t make the best decisions when you’re drunk.”

The words aren’t innocent and the implication is worse, mired in the memory of her wobbling on another’s arm. Jon regrets it instantly.

_“Stop.” _She breathes in sharply, looks away from him. “I can’t do this.”

He knows she isn’t talking about eating or drinking, but him. _Them. _Pretending.

_Nice going you fucking asshole—_

His self-deprecating train of thought is lost when he notices her eyes shining with tears, her hands shaking in her lap. He looks back and forth wildly to see if anyone’s noticed.

“Sansa.” He leans in so his whisper can be heard, to shield her from view. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought that up.”

“I can’t believe… you still don’t believe me?”

Her voice is a tremor, a plea, and Jon can only respond with the truth.

“I think I always believed you.”

Her eyes widen—shock, betrayal, _fury. _“And you still left?”

Her voice breaks on a high note and Jon is snapped out of his regret. He can’t bear to look around, to see if someone’s noticed them, although they_ must _have.

“Please,” Jon whispers. “Fuck, don’t do this right now. Not like this.”

“Fine,” she mutters harshly, sharp as the speed with which she rises from her chair. Jon watches her leave the room, his heart a dropped pit held in by his belt. He didn’t think anything could be worse than them being over— but here they are. 

* * *

Heart half-set, wildly, on leaving. If she does, it wouldn’t be above suspicion, it wouldn’t be _normal, _it would go against the plan. Her mother would call her in five minutes. Everyone will have called her by tomorrow, equal part curiosity and concern.

And Jon will be left behind, facing the inquisition on his own.

She feels a spike of guilt; she’s leaving when she’s the one who asked him to come, as he so harshly reminded her.

_He can leave too, _she thinks ruthlessly. He’s good at that.

Sansa moves quick, crossing the quiet foyer in seconds, then digs through the closet for her coat, yanks it on, pulls the front door open and steps outside, shoving her hands in her coat pockets for warmth—

And she’s confronted with the sight of Arya and Gendry, faces pressed together, her sister’s cheeks pink from love and the chill, oblivious to her, to the fact that they are blocking her way. 

Sansa whirls around before they can see her, closing the front door as quietly as she can, rushing up the stairs before she can think, walking the well-worn path to her childhood bedroom.

Once she is wrapped up in the comfortable dark and pink of her room, her breath comes easier. A faint lemon scent somehow lingers. Her searching eyes snag on the half-burnt candle on the white dresser, its black wick. She thinks of her mother coming up here still, lighting a candle so the room can smell like her daughter. She falls limply down to the bed. She drags her hands out of her coat.

A sharp corner, something hard and yielding in her pocket.

She wraps her hand around it, knowing the shape of an envelope before she pulls it out. She leans over to reach the lamp on her wicker nightstand, pulls the cord.

The light reveals a thick ivory envelope that Sansa recognizes immediately. One of the stock of five hundred Jon bought to send Christmas cards to his top clients and investors. He spent three nights handwriting the notes, the addresses and the names. Sansa doesn’t need to expel any energy to recall the fresh, detailed image of Jon hunched over his desk, hand flying, working by the single light of his desk lamp.

She places the envelope on the nightstand, stares at the inverted triangle of the envelope seam, trying to make sense of it. Jon took the cards and the envelopes with him. He didn’t leave any behind—she would know.

She also knows her pockets were empty when she arrived to the house tonight.

Sansa snatches up the envelope, heart pounding, turns it over. Messy scrawl—

_(Sweet, boyish grin. “It’s like I’m the doctor.”) _

—of black ink.

_For Red. _

Sansa blinks, disbelieving, cursing her traitorous heart for lurching at the two little words. Pet names rolled off Jon’s tongue—_sweetheart, darling, love._ But he isn’t one for nicknames—neither is she— yet he prefaced and ended his written correspondence to her that way. _Dear Red. Thanks, Red. See you soon, Red. _Sticky notes on the fridge, gift tags, emails, even the occasional text. A side of him that only emerged through the written word, that couldn’t be expressed verbally.

_For Red. _

Not an accident, then, not a mistake, not something forgotten. Something placed with purpose, for _her,_ by Jon in her coat pocket. 

She drags her fingernail beneath the seal of the envelope. Barely sealed—Sansa pictures Jon moving with haste, with urgency, his tongue barely touching the seam before pressing it closed— the envelope glides open with no effort, as if he wanted to make it as easy as possible.

_Stop it. _She blinks back the sudden, hot tears. She’s projecting. It’s for her, _yes, _and by Jon’s hand, undoubtedly. She is careful not to cry—still mindful, even now, of how she’ll have to slip out of the house and of all the people who might see her. But the thought of him filling out one of those Christmas cards with a message for her and slipping it into her coat pocket brings her closer to tears than anything so far. _Stop it. _It could be so many other things, meaningless and awful things—

A Christmas card at best, so many other things it could be at worst; a list of things he left at the house, a bill she was meant to pay. _He wouldn’t do that. _

Sansa opens it fully, draws the card out before her thoughts can unravel any further.

It’s not a Christmas card, not a lacquered store-bought card of any kind, but one of Lyanna’s postcards within.

Trembling hands hold it up to her face, because it can’t be. Sepia photograph of the half-moon arches below the bridge, the twinkling surface of the river. Not just any postcard—

_(“À bientôt.” Gown the color of midnight. His matching tie. Stomach full and skin warm from soufflé and wine. His arm around her waist, anchoring her to him half a world away. “Because we’ll always find our way back.”) _

—but Paris.

Sansa turns it over with shaking hands.

_What I’m really thankful for,_

_Every day you gave me. I didn’t deserve them. I’ll wake up every morning and wish for one more. <strike></strike>_

_Love, _

_Jon_

Then, the tears come.

* * *

Sansa doesn’t notice him right away, though she must hear the sound of the door opening and closing. She’s sitting on the bed, bent over, face in her hands. There is something unraveled in the shape of her. Jon sees her coat puddled around her, and he knows. 

“I thought I’d find you here,” he says, mostly to announce his presence, feeling as if he’s stealing something by seeing her like this. When Sansa was young, she always found comfort in this space. It is a sealed vacuum of Sansa the girl—books, dolls, a few compacts of makeup on the dresser dulled by the years. A plastic tiara hangs from one of the bedposts. Jon thinks of how many times Catelyn must have cleaned this room, must have removed these things and then replaced them exactly where they were.

It makes him think of his own mother. Of the postcard in Sansa’s grip.

“What is this?”

She lifts the postcard, holds it like china, delicately balanced over her fingertips. The sight makes his throat burn.

“What _is _this?” she demands again, ragged, pleading.

He drags his gaze to hers. Eyes red, mascara smudged. Fury and vulnerability in equal parts.

“I didn’t know if I’d be able to say it,” he admits quietly. “And I needed you to know.”

He watches her throat work. “You left me,” she cries, breaking his heart in two. “You _left_ me, you were never supposed to leave me, Jon… you can’t do this.”

Words escape him, though there’s a thousand things he’d like to say. _I left because it felt like I had no other choice. I left because you hurt me. I left because I couldn’t stand hurting you. _

“You can’t… write me a _note,_ like I’m one of your clients, even if it’s… Lyanna’s postcard…”

He’s never been able to stain his mother’s cards in any way, wrapped them to keep even dust from damaging them, let alone ink. But it was an easy choice in the end—barely a choice at all once the idea occurred to him—to write the words, to give Sansa something so valuable.

Jon watches her return her head to her hands, like it’s too heavy to hold. 

“This is just like you,” she groans. “You think a gesture… it can’t, it _won’t_ fix everything.”

Her anger is like nails scratching at his back, drawing heat, infuriating him like nothing else can. “At least I did _something.”_

“I’m the one who called,” she retorts, whip quick.

“To ask me to come here tonight.” He thinks of every day in that tiny hotel room—even the largest suite was too small for Ghost— waiting. Floating between the office and parks with Ghost in tow, never feeling so displaced in his life, _waiting._ Waiting for his phone to ring. Waiting for Sansa to apologize, to take it back, to say she didn’t mean it, _I do want forever with you._ “I waited two weeks… do you know what it was like to finally hear from you only to—to— so you could ask me to pretend for you?” 

“You were waiting for me to call?” She inhales, visibly shuddering. “Well, I was waiting for you to come back.”

The misery, the horrible irony, chokes him. _I could have come back. At any time, I could have come back. She wanted me back. _

“How was I supposed to know that.” It isn’t a question. Anger licks up his chest, fogs his brain, anger at every unexplained, unspoken _thing _that spelled the end of them. “We were done.”

“Because you decided it.”

“No…” Jon shakes his head slowly. He will take anything and everything for her, but not this. Not the burden of ending them. “I didn’t even know it was over until you called. I’m not the one who ended us.”

“Is that the way you see it?” She raises her head now, holds it high, challenge burning in her icy eyes. _“How,_ Jon? How did I end us?”

Jon jerks his chin to the side, staring, _glaring,_ at anything but her. He won’t relive this. He won’t relive that night—the rotten spill of blame and accusations and denials, like pus from a wound.

But Sansa, it seems, is eager to reopen it, a festering scab that never healed.

(She never was one to run from the truth.)

She charges forward. “Am I the one who let Rhaegar have a say in our relationship… in our _extremely _personal issues? Am I the one who let him—”

_“You let him, too.”_ Jon interrupts, broken. He looks at her, finds her very still. “Maybe I’m stupid for not seeing it. Maybe I should have paid better attention, like you said. But if you’d said _one word, _Sansa… if you’d just _told me _you didn’t want to do it—”

“I _couldn’t,”_ she spits. “You always wanted to be a dad. You were so happy… every time we…”

She chokes, pressing a hand to her mouth, fresh tears running down her cheeks. The image is too similar to another—sheets, skirt, chair soaked with blood so dark it looked black.

Four times. Four almosts, four losses, four not-quites.

“And there Rhaegar was,” Sansa says, voice a mere thread, hopelessness and bitterness shining on her face. “Offering you the opportunity on a silver platter. An egg donor and surrogate, perfect health, perfect genes because of _course _that’s all Rhaegar cares about… And _you _wanted to do it, Jon. I saw that.”

_I did. Fuck me, I did. _Two years ago they decided to stop trying, and Jon placed his dream of being a father in a box, box hidden in a drawer, to be revisited at a later, less painful time. And as the pain eased with time, he found himself opening that box again and again, was surprised to find Sansa receptive to it, and they started talking about their options. 

Then, he’d made the mistake of telling Rhaegar.

He’d only done so as a mirror of Sansa’s actions. She confided in her mother about it, sought her advice. Another point of contention that never should have been one, a private resentment Jon nursed to his utter detriment. The Starks were always privy to everything, and while Jon loved them more than his own family—while they were more _deserving _of that trust than his own family—there was a part of him that kept trying to let Rhaegar in, even if he knew the man would ultimately disappoint.

At the expense of them. At the expense of her.

“I wanted us to be happy more,” Jon says, voice hoarse. “I wouldn’t have even considered the idea if you’d told me how you felt.”

She shakes her head. “My reasons were so stupid. Selfish—”

_“No.”_ He backs his words with every ounce of conviction he has. “Rhaegar was selfish. Eugenics obsessed asshole,” he mutters. “I never should have listened to him. I never gave a shit about a ‘Targaryen heir’. I gave a shit about _us._ And Sansa…” His voice breaks. “It was always going to be hard. By acting like you were okay with it when you weren’t, you never gave us a chance to get through this whole.” 

Sansa smiles sadly. He know she knows he’s right. “I hated myself for wanting to say it. I hated myself for not saying it.”

“So, say it.” Jon shocks himself with the command, but suddenly he needs to hear it. _“Please,_ say it now. I need you to be able to, for…” _For the future._ Even if that future doesn’t hold him in it.

But then she says something else, in a whisper so small. “I wish you didn’t leave that night.”

_Me too. _

“I asked you to marry me. You said no.” Jon lifts his gaze to hers, finds her eyes round and creased with pain. “Where were we supposed to go from there?”

* * *

The reminder pulls a sharp breath from her, lowers her eyes to her lap, except the postcard is in her lap, and that makes it worse.

“I wish you’d given us a chance to find out,” she mutters, so low she doesn’t think he hears her, and when he doesn’t answer with righteous anger—with _how would you feel _or _you’re the one who got that drunk _or _you’re the one who came back on his arm, _all the things she’s tormented herself with since that night— she knows he didn’t.

“You said no to me, Sansa,” he repeats, wretched, breaking her heart. 

“I didn’t say no to _you.”_ Sansa’s said this before, of course, a dozen versions of it, on the floor with gin pumping through her head. Tears streaming down her face. Jon’s, too. “I said no because of everything else. All our problems.”

The day had started so _beautifully, _she thinks with a twist of irony that makes her heart hurt. Breakfast in bed. Weather mild enough for lunch outside at her favorite bistro. She was confused at Jon’s sudden attentiveness, a feeling she directed inwards, wrapped up in her guilt as she had been the one avoiding him.

Then the violinist, the gazebo, the photographer, the promises. The ring.

“I’ve been waiting maybe… I don’t know, four years for you to propose to me, Jon.” Pinterest boards, wedding binder, all with his name branded on them in her mind. “I _dreamed_ of marrying you. But that day— your timing—seeing you actually _do_ it—I couldn’t say yes. Not without getting everything out in the open.”

Jon shakes his head, his mouth twisted against the taste of something sour. “God, just… do you _see _how much we could’ve avoided, if you’d just been honest?”

_“Stop._ We’ve gone through that.” Again and again and again. It hurts to hear it. To know he’s right.

He inhales, holds his breath in his puffed up chest. Releases. “So _do it, then_. Get everything out in the open. What else is there?”

“Ygritte,” she snaps. She doesn’t even have to think.

Jon’s already dark gaze dims. “I thought we resolved that.”

“We really haven’t.”

“It was just a jacket,” he says slowly, the echo of her words used against her a new form of torture.

“She wasn’t _‘just’_ anything. She was going to carry our child in her body, to be its mother—”

_“Sansa.”_ His tone, his eyes, strip her bare. A thing she can’t stand to be anymore, especially before him. _“You_ would’ve been the mother.”

“Biologically, I mean.” Sansa twists her hands together. “Ygritte was too close to us, too…” The embodiment of all her insecurities, the woman who was going to give Jon what Sansa never could. “Smelling her on your jacket was too much for me.”

_She was cold. What else was I supposed to do? _Chivalrous Jon wasn’t capable of anything else. Still, the phantom scent had taunted her for a week. She hadn’t been able to think of anything else.

That’s when she booked her first therapy session. Something Jon didn’t know.

“Ygritte wasn’t the best with boundaries,” Jon winces. _I’ll say, _Sansa thinks, remembering the woman’s brash words and her grabby hands, her quick grin. “We shouldn’t have had dinner. You know she’s the one who asked—she never texted me outside the group chat. She invited you too.”

And Sansa had said no. Her therapist would advise against what she’s about to say—_you need to accept responsibility for your own actions—_but she can’t help herself. “A part of me wished you’d refuse to go without me.”

Jon winces. “I… I just wanted to make her comfortable. I didn’t know what to do, either, it was all new for me too and I couldn’t talk to you about it. You were gone all the time… even when you were there.”

Her chest aches. So he had been paying attention after all.

“Why…” She loses her voice. “Why did you choose to propose _then?” _

He swallows, shame or regret or pain turning his gaze downwards. “Because I _know you,_ Sansa,” he declares, voice sad. “I knew you’d want to be married before we became parents.”

And she’d known it, hadn’t she? That was why she said no.

* * *

Jon shuffles on his feet, the discomfort of standing with his muscles tense for so long setting in. But he can’t even consider joining her on the bed. He does not think he would be welcome there.

“I don’t get that,” Sansa says, barely restrained anger thrumming through her voice again. “We tried to have a baby years ago. Kept trying. Why didn’t you propose then?”

Because of the miscarriages. Because of her broken heart, the way she floated around like a ghost for weeks afterwards, because it took everything in him to hold her and him together, to heal them both. Because—and he’s ashamed to admit how much something so insignificant contributed to the reason—he wanted his company to be successful, to know he could take care of her, before he married her.

He’d wanted to make her girlhood dreams come true, got stuck in the misconception that there was a perfect time, fucked it up and lost her instead. In the end he’d chosen the worst time, hadn’t he?

“I should have proposed years ago,” he says, hating himself at the girlish way she looks up at him, that finally-seen look in her eyes. “I waited too long. That’s the truth.”

She chuckles darkly. “Yeah. That’s the truth.”

“But it hurt to hear you say no, Sansa.” The words leave him before he can examine them too much. _Get everything out, then. _Now it’s his turn. “And it hurt worse when you ran.”

Ran—it’s the perfect word for what she did, leaving him by the sparkling lake, stunned and broken-hearted. He thought she’d gone home; once he finally collected himself enough to trudge through the city homewards he felt dread at seeing her and grim curiosity at what she’d have to say. But he never questioned his assumption that she’d be home.

She wasn’t home, and as the sky grew dark his heart shrunk with it, growing tense and sharp.

“I _had_ to go,” Sansa says wretchedly. “I couldn’t stay there.”

“Why?”

But Sansa only shakes her head, bites her lip.

“I was worried sick. I felt crazy. I thought you’d left me.” Jon barely registers Sansa’s head jerking up at that. “I was going to start calling people. The fucking police. I was going to look for you. Then, to… to _see_ you like that…”

Sansa’s gaze darkens. Her lip trembles. “I said it a million times. I’m _sorry.”_

Jon shakes his head. “You keep saying I left you. You left first.”

Instantly, Sansa’s gaze narrows. “Not forever.”

“There was no way for me to know that.” He tastes the cigarettes and the panic that choked him as he paced outside their townhouse. “You left, without saying anything. Right after rejecting my proposal. Then you showed up… so late, with _him—”_

“No one, Jon.” Her eyes are wet, face open, imploring. “He’s no one. I didn’t even know his name.”

His chest feels hard again, made of stone. Better than the rage that consumed him then, he supposes. “Is that supposed to make it better?”

Something hard cuts across her gaze, a momentary glare. “You’re not perfect either.”

Jon would laugh if he could, if the situation weren’t so grim and agonizing. He is under no illusions of his own perfection. “Oh, I know. What was it you called me? Barbaric?”

She winces. “He didn’t _do _anything, and you hit him.”

_“How was I supposed to know.” _Another disaster, another nail in their coffin, because of everything he was ignorant to. “You don’t know what it looked like. You couldn’t even stand up. I lost my fucking mind.”

He watches Sansa suck in a shaky breath. “He was helping me get home. That’s it.”

_That’s what you think._ Maybe Sansa believed that then, but he thinks she’s too smart to believe it now. A pretty woman drunk out of her mind… Jon closes his eyes against the horrible images of terrible possibilities.

Sansa opens her mouth, but before she can speak Jon raises a hand, palm forward, knows the darkness present in his eyes. It’s vibrating through his body. “Wait. Stop.”

She does just that, ducking her head. Jon turns half away from her, angling his body towards the door, though he has no intention to leave. He simply needs not to look at her, not to remember—her hair thrown over another’s shoulder, a stranger’s thick arms winding around her in that little black dress. Wobble in her step. Blood across his knuckles, his and not his.

“You said you believed me,” she forays bravely. “I didn’t do anything with him. _Nothing. _I’d never… I didn’t cheat on you.”

He swallows, scrape of cement in his throat. “I know. But he could have hurt you. That’s what scares me.”

“I know,” she replies wretchedly, fast. “I had so much to drink… my phone was dead, I felt like I didn’t know where I was, and he just offered to walk me home—”

He shakes his head, hands rising again to get her to _stop,_ because he can’t even form the words this time around. He heard this all before, and it hurts him, scares him—that the man could’ve been like any other, dangerous and hungry. That she showed up at the house like that, on another’s arm, while he was waiting for her—to beg her to explain, to change her mind, to _accept._

“Why…” He lets himself look at her, realizes he’s been resisting that pull all along. “Why did you leave? Why did you need to get that drunk?” 

She stays perfectly still for a moment—then shrugs. “I don’t know.” She looks up at him, smiling, but it doesn’t look happy. It looks wretched, miserable. “I don’t know. I said no to marrying you, and everything was so _rotten,_ and you had no idea.”

_I would have, if you’d told me, if you’d let me in. _But Jon bites his tongue. He’s said it enough.

* * *

Jon is a solid specter, a statue, his position by the door making him look like a guard. A part of Sansa knows he’s standing there because he can’t fully enter the room, because it’s easier to flee. Still. It’s sweeter to pretend. _Always my protector. _Even to his detriment…. especially then. Ramsay, Baelish, the asshole who tried to grope her on a night out several years before. The asshole who pulled out a knife. From this distance Sansa can’t clearly see the scar running through Jon’s brow and underneath his eye, but she knows the shape of it better than anything on her own body.

She wonders if he has any new scars from that night two weeks prior, though all he’d doled out was a punch. She’s seized suddenly by the urge to pull his knuckles to her and examine them, kiss them.

Her stomach twists. Desire. Pain. _You have no right. _

A chain of bad decisions, capped off by the worst one—the gin and tonics, the tequila shots, the man who looked a lot like Jon through her blurred vision, though taller and his mouth was different. He had a nice voice, a voice that promised to take her home safely if she told him where she lived, and oh she was such an _idiot._

“I’m sorry I hurt you.”

Jon’s gaze snaps to hers, inscrutable. “Me too.”

Despite the pain of the purge, Sansa feels lighter. This isn’t like that night, though so many of the same things are being said. She wonders what the difference is—their calm, the location, or maybe the fact that this is really the last conversation. Their closure. The realization makes Sansa’s throat close.

And suddenly, she wants to say everything. Everything.

“I felt so alone.” Somehow, it’s a hard thing to admit. “Not just that night. For months. Ever since you let Rhaegar have a say. Ever since I met Ygritte.”

“Sansa—”

“Wait.” She takes a breath, remembers her therapist’s words. “It _was_ my fault, that I let it happen, when I didn’t want it to. That I didn’t speak up. You’re right. I have to take responsibility.”

She expects shock, not the quiet nod he gives her. “I’m sorry I didn’t see it, that I didn’t do more. I’m sorry I listened to Rhaegar, that I told him in the first place. I’m sorry I met with Ygritte without you… fuck, there’s too many things I did wrong.”

He scrapes a hand over his face, the gesture so endearing it nearly pulls Sansa off the bed, launching her towards him. “You’re doing a pretty good job listing them.”

Jon doesn’t respond to the joke. When he bares his face again he looks aged several years, exhausted. “I’m sorry I left,” he adds, hoarse.

“I’m sorry I asked you to come here,” she says before she can think about it, before she can change her mind. “To pretend, to lie.”

Jon looks at her squarely. She thinks she can see him shifting, towards her. “I’m not.”

He can’t have said that—she misheard him, surely. Except she’s sure she hasn’t.

He has been brave. She can be, too. She can take a leap, a push in the direction she wants them to go.

“What happens now?”

Her heart beats too loud, too hard, in the seconds it takes him to respond. “We go back downstairs… we’ve been up here a long time.”

_Oh._

He misunderstands her— on purpose, she’s sure, but it’s all she needs to understand. _It’s over. _

She stands up, wiping one clammy hand on the skirt of her dress—doing nothing for her hand, doing nothing to smooth out the fabric. The other hand still holds the postcard, delicately, tightly. If this is all she’s meant to have of this night, of him, she’ll hold on tight. Maybe one day it will feel like enough.

“Benjen has more of these for you,” she says before the pain she knows is coming makes her forget. At Jon’s quizzical look, she raises the postcard. “He found them in some of Lyanna’s old things.”

“Oh.” He stares at the postcard, fixed in place. His eyes don’t move for several long moments, and Sansa stays still, the postcard pinched between her fingertips floating in the air between them.

Sudden fear strikes her, irrational and so painful she almost wants to hurl. “Did you want this back?”

It would be within his right, and yet it would hurt her beyond belief. 

But Jon, gentle Jon, smiles the slightest bit—mere quirk of his lips—and shakes his head. His eyes are pools of sadness when he says, “It was for you to keep.”

Sansa returns her hand to her body, cradling the postcard to her chest. The journey across the room is surprisingly swift. Suddenly she’s standing beside Jon, and she can’t look at him as she turns the doorknob.

Fingertips upon her upended wrist. The slightest touch, but enough to send a current through her, enough to stop her. She looks at him, finding him closer than she thought.

“Don’t,” he says, so low she barely hears.

And this—one word from him—breaks a dam in her. Silent tears slide down her cheeks. She pulls her hand away from the doorknob, is stunned when his hand follows hers, fingers moving to wrap around her wrist. “Okay.”

“Don’t cry.” His brows are pinched together, his face suddenly too close. She feels every one of his breaths on her face and thinks, _home_. “Don’t go. God damn it. Please.”

“I don’t want to.” She says it so quickly she trips over her words, blending them until she’s afraid they can’t be understood. She speaks more slowly, clearly, even though every part of her is trembling. With fear, with hope.

“I don’t want us to be over.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... THERE IT IS. I have deeply enjoyed reading all your theories about "wtf happened?!" For everyone who accurately predicted a bit of why they broke up: [BITCH YOU GUESSED IT! YOU WAS RIGHT!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TkG8Osw-HI)


	6. love's enough

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [( x )](https://missfaber.tumblr.com/post/635618751782453248/until-then-jon-doesnt-realize-his-heart-hasnt) well well well, it's _that_ time of year again! no one could have predicted what a hell hole we were in for at the tail end of 2019, but it's strangely sweet to be able to return to a time when I had no idea what was to come. Most of us aren't getting *typical* thanksgiving dinners with our families this year, so I hope this does something to soothe that ache. Thank you all so much for the months you waited for this last chapter. It took sooo much work, I can't _begin_ to tell you how much was edited out until I was pleased with the result. I've taken great care with this fic overall— at this high level of intensity every image has to be meaningful and there's more weight on my writing choices, and there was even higher pressure for the ending... but oh what a labor of love. I hope it gives you everything you need for a satisfying conclusion— the dark and the real balanced by (much needed) sexy and sweet. 
> 
> PS, I am starting a new series soon on tumblr where I make lil graphics for the songs I listen to while writing fic (will link here when this one is up!) Before you get to reading, I suggest a hot cup of tea and Saturn (instrumental) by Sleeping At Last drifting in the air around you. I love the OG version of that song for many reasons, but the instrumental is the _only_ track I listened to for the hours I spent over a span of a year writing this fic. The beginning is so sad and full of yearning and it just gets steadily more hopeful. Now I'll never be able to listen to it without remembering this Sansa and Jon, their flaws and struggles and their deep, deep love. 
> 
> [(and check out the fic tag here for more media related to the fic!)](https://missfaber.tumblr.com/tagged/iwasgvott)

Until then, Jon doesn’t realize his heart hasn’t been beating, not for weeks. Not since he dropped to one knee before her and asked for forever. _What’s mine is yours, _he’d said, never the best with words, but it’s what his mother taught him about love.

He hears Lyanna’s voice in his head now, he can picture her, ticking off points on her fingers. _Give everything you can, don’t try to change them… and for god’s sake, baby, always tell the truth._

It’s in that last part he failed— though he’s spoken the truth tonight, here, in this room. _There’s too many things I did wrong, _he said, and that’s true too_._ A small part of him—the part that’s always been in awe of her, the part that’s never truly believed he deserves her, the part that loves her unselfishly—considers letting her go. Except—

Except he doesn’t believe anyone’s worthy of her, anyway.

Except he can do better.

Except who is he to dictate what she wants, when she’s already told him so clearly, so bravely?

_I don’t want us to be over. _

“Neither do I.”

Jon feels her heartbeat through the delicate skin of her wrist, a drum against his fingertips. He lets himself be selfish, unleashes his want for her—god he wants her more than anything, _instead of _anything. “I didn’t want to—Sansa, I never want to lose you again.”

“It has to change,” she whispers hoarsely. “We have to be better. _Talk _better—”

“Yes. I’ll be better.” Her pulse jumps under his roving fingertips, making it hard to think. He’s drunk on her, so close after so long away—two weeks only, yes, but he thought it would be forever.

“Tell me what you want,” he pleads, even as a rational voice in his brain counsels: _unfair. _But he feels irrational, drunk on the possibility of being allowed to love her again, feverish with the desire to feel her pulse somewhere else— through her throat with his tongue. He swallows, reigns it in—_that won’t work. _

Still, he doesn’t let go of her. He can’t. 

“I want to do better,” he adds, hoping he sounds calm. “We have a lot to figure out, but… if there’s something you can think of now...” 

“Ygritte—” She bites her tongue, ducks her head.

“Out of the picture,” he supplies, instant. “Rhaegar, too.”

Sansa looks up then, suspicion and sorrow both in her eyes. “Jon…”

“I’ll cut him off, Sansa,” he swears.

“You can’t do that. He’s your dad.”

He looks into her sparkling eyes, sees an offering in them. Despite everything Rhaegar’s done, everything Jon _allowed _him to do, she would tolerate his presence in their lives to spare Jon the decision of cutting him out of it. If he asked it of her.

He thinks of how long he craved his father’s acceptance, his approval, his love. He thinks of how his mother was the one to show him the meaning of the word—genuine, generous, without bounds or conditions. He thinks of her cooking fruit in the kitchen to make his favorite jams, tending his fevers and wholly giving up her unrestricted lifestyle when he came along.

He thinks of how, when he met Sansa, it was like being steeped in it, like discovering the ocean after a lifetime of skipping through pools of rainwater.

Love is a choice, a choice Rhaegar did not make.

“I think I’ve been close to making this decision for a long time,” Jon says, surprised to find his voice a bit hoarse. Sansa’s brows pinch—she is pained, for him. “It’s the right decision. He doesn’t love me, not the way he should at least. He doesn’t respect us, our relationship. He shouldn’t be a part of our lives anymore.”

Sansa’s hand finds his elbow—Jon curses the thick sweater from keeping him from feeling her hand on his skin— and leans in. “Don’t do it for me,” she whispers. “And if you do it now, it _will_ be for me, no matter what you tell yourself.”

Her breath on his face, wine-sweet—it makes him dizzy. It makes him hard. He closes his eyes briefly, holds his breath in his lungs. _Focus. _“Is there anything else you want to ask for, sweetheart?”

Sharp intake of breath at the pet name. “Yes...” She pulls her hand from his elbow, tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear, returns her hand to its place. _Nervous. _“Would you consider…therapy?”

It’s a great idea. He nods, seeing hesitation lift instantly with a slight curve of her lips. He wonders why it never occurred to him, but therapy wasn’t a normal occurrence either side of his family. His mother was too free-spirited and impulsive until the very end, and the thought of a Targaryen introspecting enough to seek mental help is laughable. He wishes things were different; he can see immediately see the many merits of the idea. Already his mind runs with alternate scenarios if they’d gone to therapy _before, _how much it could have helped them, how much it could have changed things—

_Pointless. _He makes himself stop.

He’ll never be able to spare her the pain she’s suffered in the past. But he can try to make sure he never causes it again.

“I think therapy would really help.” He wants to make sure she knows what he’s thinking.

“Good.” Eyes lowering, she fiddles with that lock of hair again. Jon wants to touch it, too— has to physically restrain himself.

“I’ve been going… since before our breakup,” she says. “It’s helping, with my own things—obviously we’ll go to someone else, someone neutral, for couples counseling. ”

He’s curious about that, can’t help it. Curious about what she talked about in that room—Ramsay? The miscarriages? Him? Or all those and all the other little things he would never know about her, those most private parts in another person that belong to them alone. Curious about the catalyst—feeling guilty for it already, knowing she’d chosen to seek help when things were at their worst between them. Curious about the potential of his own individual therapy, a thing he already knows is part of his future. 

“I’m proud of you.” The words slip before he evaluates them. “I don’t mean that to sound condescending, I’m sorry—”

“It’s not.” Her eyes—no flash of hurt, still warm, _listening—_ reassure him.

“You’ve always been smarter than me.” His heart warms as he looks at her, glowing by degrees at his praise, but there’s a pinch of pain in his chest too. “Is it stupid to think… I wish we’d gone before. There was so much pain, and I thought I could fix it for both of us, all by myself.”

Ghosts slide across her vision—Jon can see them, too. Has there ever been so much regret in one man? So much longing?

“We can’t change the past,” she says quietly.

“No,” Jon agrees. “But there were good times, too. I could see them so clearly, in my head. It was killing me.” 

Sansa chuckles, a mirthless sound. “I know exactly what you mean.”

“Thinking… _knowing _that I couldn’t…” He lifts his free hand, trailing her hairline with his fingertips. The slightest touch. Her eyes slip closed. She sways into him, chin resting on his shoulder, and Jon wants to hold her forever.

He breathes deeper, harder. He can’t help it. She can feel it, _him, _he’s sure. His hand slides over her hair, then under, fingers working their way into the complicated style. Finds a pin and pulls it out, not caring where it lands. Her arms rise to wrap around his shoulders, clinging to him as he works. Again, again, pinch and pull, until her hair blessedly unravels.

When it’s loose, he takes the silken stream in his hand, loops it over his fist. Tugs lightly.

A gasp. “Jon…”

Instantly he relaxes his fist, letting her hair spill over his hand, down her back. He lifts his hand to the crown of her head, strokes softly, tries to regulate his breathing. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s just—” A ragged breath he recognizes; she’s struggling for composure. “You haven’t asked for anything.” She pulls back enough to look up at him from beneath her lashes; eyelids heavy, pupils wide. “Is there anything you want from me?”

He can think of a great many things. His fingers flex against her back, involuntary.

There’s one thing, one _real _thing— but he hesitates. She’s soft and happy in his arms. He doesn’t want to ruin it.

_For god’s sake, baby, always tell the truth._

His mother’s voice in his mind sways him. “I want to give us our best chance,” he starts carefully.

Something shifts in her eyes; curious, wary. “So do I.”

“I want you to say it. What I asked you to say before… I want to know you _can.”_

Her brow furrows. “What do you mean?”

“Say what you should have said to me when I presented you with Rhaegar’s idea,” he says. “What you’ve wanted to say to me since. I asked you to tell me before.”

She avoided it then, and he’d let it go, but he didn’t forget. He needs her to be able to say it, needs to know she trusts him with the truth.

Her teeth dig into her lip. Her eyes fill with tears, quickly overflowing.

Jon lunges forward in the non-existent space between them, holds her cheek in his palm. “Sansa,” he murmurs. “It’s _not_ selfish. It’s your right. Sansa, you can trust me. Say it, tell me how you feel.”

“I’m not okay with it.” The words come out choked at first, then overflow; a dam bursting. “I’m not comfortable with using an egg donor, a surrogate, I’m _not._ Oh, god, I’m really, _really_ not—”

“Okay. Okay, Sansa. Shhh.” He pulls her in, stroking her back in comforting motions as she buries her face between his shoulder and his neck, wets his skin with her tears. He’s not a religious man, but he finds himself sending out a prayer now, beyond grateful that despite all the misunderstandings they’d never gone past the initial consultations, that they hadn’t yet done anything irreversible.

“Sansa.” He cradles the back of her head, holding her to him. “God. I’m so sorry for putting you through it.”

“I should have told you how I felt,” she mumbles into his shoulder, subdued for the moment. “Maybe someday… maybe I’ll change my mind.”

The lilt of hope at the end of her voice breaks his heart. There are no limits to what she’s willing to give, to try. “You don’t have to promise me that. I don’t want that.”

“But you _want_ a _family,”_ she gasps, in an instant distraught again. “I shouldn’t deny you the option of having a biological child when _I’m _the one who’s broken—”

“Don’t say that.” He bites it off harshly, like a curse. “There’s nothing wrong with you. _Nothing,” _he says again, his hands framing her face, forcing her to look into his eyes. He hope she sees conviction there. 

“I want children too.” She whispers it so low, so broken, that he wonders if part of her is ashamed. If this natural desire has become so twisted with pain that it’s become the most private of wishes. “But I just—I’m so messed up over everything that I can’t, I _can’t_ figure out a way to do it that won’t hurt.”

“I don’t want you to hurt anymore.” Voice broken, heart weary. _Please, please, no more._ “Especially—_especially_ if you’re hurting because you’re trying to give me what you think I want.”

“I know what you want,” she whispers. “I _know_ you, Jon.”

“Don’t tell me what I want,” he says, the words without venom, spoken softly. “I try not to do that to you. Look at me, listen… _listen.” _

He cradles her face again, stares deeply into her brilliant eyes. “I don’t need a biological child. _Any_ child that you raise will be my child. And if it’s just you and me when I’m eighty… _god,_ I’d be lucky, if you love me for that long, if you’re next to me when I’m on my deathbed.”

_“Jon…”_ Fresh tears, trembling mouth.

“One day, we’ll find the family that works for us,” he promises. “There’s no rush, sweetheart.”

“I don’t want you to resent me,” she confesses, crying again by the end of her sentence. “I don’t want you to regret…”

_Oh, Sansa._ “How could I regret…” The best thing that ever happened to him, the love of his life, his center of gravity. Cheap, cheesy, _common_ platitudes that do nothing to express how important she is, how everything else is disposable but she is not.

“Tell me the truth.” He hooks her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. “If the roles were reversed, and I couldn’t give you biological children. We lived til we’re old, just the two of us. Would you wish you’d left me? Would you regret loving me?”

He already knows the answer. He knows her love.

“No,” she answers firmly, and he can already tell that something has changed, moving in the right direction. “Never.” 

“Try to understand that I feel the same way,” he pleads. “Please, baby, try.”

“Okay,” she sighs after a moment. “Okay, I’ll try.”

_It’s a start, _he thinks, dropping to his knees and pressing a kiss to her belly.

* * *

A gasp flies from her mouth, pulled from somewhere deep within her, from the place that’s been throbbing for him for minutes—ridiculous, _shameful_ as they discuss important things, but it all has a way of coming to the surface at once, every emotion intertwined—from the place that’s pained, from the place that can’t help but remember him doing this when there was a life growing inside her.

“Enough.” A murmur against her belly muffled by the thick dress, repeated between kisses planted there. “Enough, enough. You’re enough.”

Tears, again, salt soaking her quivering mouth. She’d long ago embraced the bottomless well within her, a depth of endless feeling, a promise that every time she thought she was done with tears there would be more. This time, new hope mingles with the old wounds. The fledgling start of acceptance.

_Maybe this really is enough for him. _She knows it’s enough for her.

She thinks of the last two weeks, of the projected rest of her life without him, and shudders. _More than enough. _His hands tighten where they grasp the backs of her thighs, pulling her closer.

“I love you.” He tilts his chin up, looks at her. Devotion, raw and total. “I love you,” he says again, his voice changing— naked, peeled back. His eyes shine with tears. “I love you, I love you, _let me love you.” _

Her heart _hurts,_ expanding though it feels stretched to the limit. Sansa runs her hand over his hair, his beard, his chin. His eyes slip closed at the touch. “I love _you,_ Jon.”

A perfect smile tilts his lips as he leans into her hand. “I was shocked to hear it,” he quietly admits. “At the dinner table.”

A surge of sorrow and aching rushes to her mouth— _of course I love you Jon I never stopped— _but he speaks first. No longer smiling, his brows stitched and his face etched with regret. “I’m sorry, Sansa, I’m _so _fucking sorry,” his voice breaks. “For everything.”

“Come up here,” she whispers, hoarse, and he instantly obeys. Her fingertips skim his bearded chin, the line of his jaw, play with a loose curl freed from his bun. His eyes are dark. When her she touches the back of his neck, the hair pulled tight there, he stiffens—

—then surges forward, hands between her and the door as he slams her against it, mouth hot and urgent on hers.

They are well practiced in this dance, but in this moment everything feels new. Losing someone does that, she thinks. She never thought—thought it was over—didn’t think it would happen again—

Jon’s tongue slides past the seam of her mouth and Sansa stops thinking.

He is here. He is _hers._

He moans her name into her mouth, low, like a prayer, like a plea. Sansa loves the taste of it, the taste of everything he has to offer, turkey and cinnamon and ale and something faintly sweet, and the ghost of cigarette smoke, too. It doesn’t matter. It’s Jon.

“God.” It’s a breath from Jon’s lungs he shares with her, and Sansa swallows it. _“God.”_

“I know,” she whispers, lips struggling to form the two little words, as if they so quickly forgot how to speak.

He dives back in, kissing her with twice the vigor and Sansa’s drunk on it—she lives now in this darkness, lives in this world of sensation, of molding her lips to Jon’s and stroking his tongue with hers, of opening and closing, of reaching across and being found.

He is hot and solid against her, firm as the door behind her. One hand at her hip, biting into her flesh through the dress. The other in her hair, sifting, stroking, nails scraping her scalp. Every scratch sending a shock through her body.

He pulls his mouth away— eyes still closed, Sansa whines at the denial. Then her head is jerked back by his fist in her hair and his lips are at her throat and she’s hit with a shock of arousal so strong her knees wobble— she clings to him, hands clutching his muscled arms.

“I got you.” Husky murmur against her skin. Sansa lets herself melt, boneless, floating, knows he will hold her up.

Drag of his tongue against her heated skin—heat and instant cold, shock of cool air against where he’s licked. She gasps, scrabbles at him, finds him shaking, too. Slight but there, a tremor that claws at her heart, that she desperately wishes to still.

She says something, something sweet, she thinks—a second later she can’t remember what it was as his teeth clamp down on her throat.

“Jon,” she whines, pure need. “Jon _please—”_

His face falls into the hollow of her shoulder, breath hot and wet on her skin as his hand leaves her hip, bunching the dress in his grip, raising and reaching below the hem— below, below, and under.

The slide of his fingers against her thigh is agonizing_, _a _month_ before fingertips skim the front of her panties—her stomach squeezes, the want unbearable.

Then he’s dipping underneath—that rough, delicious scrape, drawing a hiss from him and a cry from her. _“Fuck, _Sansa,” he moans into her neck, and then he’s inside, sliding in effortlessly.

“I remember this bit,” he taunts, fucking her with what must be more than one finger, _oh god. _“You always did get sloppy for me.”

_“Fuck you,” _she hisses, the sheer delicious _arrogance _leaving her no choice but to claw at his back til she’s sure she’s left marks through his clothes.

“No—fuck _you,_ baby—”

“Shut up.” Her mind has melted through her skull, drips down her throat, nothing but need. Burning stretch—he adds a finger, fucks her ruthlessly. “Oh _god,_ feels so good—”

“So wet for me—”

“So _hard _I want it—”

_“Missed this—” _

Heel of his palm grinds against her, against her clit, and she groans.

“Jon, please,” she pants. She won’t cum yet, she _won’t. _“I need you inside, please—”

He pulls back, looks at her. Somehow his hair is freed like hers, his mouth swollen and lipstick-brown, his eyes pure black—and unbelievably, truly happy.

Lifts his fingers to his mouth, sucks them in deep.

* * *

Lightning—his pants around his ankles, her panties on the floor. His cock in his hand, painfully hard. Her eyes, thin rim of blue around the black, jumping to his cock. The taste of her in his mouth.

He takes one of her hands in his, intertwining their fingers, holds the desperate knot against the door above her head. Lifts her leg over his other arm, lines himself up against her—cock jumps at the proximity to her heat, at the promise of being inside her.

“I missed you,” he murmurs, surprised and not surprised at the wave of tenderness rising in his chest, and then he’s inside her— vice grip, sharp breath sucked between his teeth. Her mouth opens, and Jon finds himself wishing he had another hand, a _few _more to touch her everywhere, to tug her dress down and bare her breasts, to put his fingers in her red, open mouth.

He draws out, heated hiss through gritted teeth before he plunges back in, knocking her against the door, making them both groan.

“Sansa,” he moans, eyes dipping as her hand reaches between them, before returning his gaze to hers. He looks into her eyes, faces perfectly level, nudges her nose with his own. Pant into each other’s mouths.

“Mine, Sansa, _mine_ again, god—”

“I never want to be—_never _wanna be anything else— and you’re—” She cries out, head dropping as she arches towards him, as if they could be closer.

“I never stopped.” A whisper confessed in her damp hair.

She gasps, pulses around him. _“Fuck,_ oh god Jon—”

He feels it, sees her look down the bridge of her nose at him in that telltale way. Almost afraid, helpless, knowing what’s coming. He could cum from that look alone, has to grit his teeth and look away, buries his face in the slick skin at her neck and fucks her faster, harder.

“No, I need— look at me.”

He does. Eyes half-lidded and drunk and _bright, _rims of blue. He doesn’t break eye contact as she goes over the edge, squeezes her hand tighter against the wall. A spiritual experience, to look at Sansa Stark as she cums, the holiest of services.

She gasps shallowly, futile attempt to keep her voice low—and Jon, Jon is _lost_ as she flutters and then clamps around him—he is helpless, too— spots of white blinking across his vision as he cums inside her, wants to keep looking at her but he _can’t,_ rocking forward as he groans into her skin, her hair, barely aware that he’s fucking her still, hips rocking slowly into her—slowly, slowly, and not at all.

Then they are standing still. Jon is curved around her, her nails digging into his bare hip. He releases her leg, still raised over his elbow. The edge of his vision spots her wincing as she lowers it.

Sansa’s thumb swipes his cheek and he realizes he’s crying.

* * *

Sansa sits primly at the little dresser, attempting to restore order to her hair. The nest it’s suddenly become, her bare and swollen mouth, lipstick kissed away—she looks wrecked, feels it too, in the best way possible.

In the mirror, she watches Jon watch her. His eyes are dark and needful as they follow her every movement, sending a thrill up her spine. _Let’s go home_—and the knowledge it would be as it was, that Jon would come with her, makes her throat thick.

“I want to go again,” he says, making her chuckle. Despite the mirthful twinkle in his eye, she knows he means it.

“You just want to fuck me in my childhood bed,” she teases. The words come out lower and dirtier than she meant them to, and the effect on Jon seems instantaneous—leaning, leering.

“And if I do?”

“We have our bed,” she says, and his eyes warm. “Besides, you’ll get your chance… maybe this can be an annual tradition.” Though the thought is more amusing than anything else, the opening of future possibilities that only hours ago seemed forever gone is staggering.

He nods soberly, looks at his feet. “Home. I missed it.” 

She turns on the vanity stool to face him. “It’s not home without you,” she says, heartfelt.

“I waste away without you,” he responds, low and steady.

“God.” She swipes at her eyes. “At this rate, we’ll never get it together enough to leave this room without drawing all kinds of suspicion.”

“Let them.” Jon rises to his feet easily, one fluid motion, and extends a hand to her. “They’re already thinking it anyway.”

She takes the offered hand, leaning her weight on Jon as her shaking legs threaten to drop her. Jon’s response is a knowing, proud smirk. On another day she would smack his arm reproachfully, coach them into appearing above reproach before they face the others. But today, she doesn’t care. If her father himself was to look at her suspiciously—a mortifying nightmare— it wouldn’t be worse than the emotional hailstorm they’d born already. It wouldn’t even compare.

She giggles—can’t help it. Jon squints at her, starts to smile back. “What?”

“Nothing,” she shakes her head. “Let them do their worst. We can take it.”

Jon tightens his hold. “Together.” 

* * *

Together, they turn the knob. Together, they step out of the room. Despite Sansa’s infectious bravado, they both walk as noiselessly as they can. The house seems quieter, settled and calm. As they approach the staircase, a low hum of voices can be heard, sated with drink and dinner.

Jon feels himself smile as familiar voices drift to his ears. He no longer hears the ticking clock, the impending finality. He will be here again soon, with the people he loves. Now—now he only wants to be alone with Sansa.

“We’re leaving, right?” he whispers.

“Absolutely,” she stage whispers back.

Jon nods, unable to help another grin. “Good. Just wanted to make sure we’re on the same page before we go down.”

Sansa glances at him—inscrutable, but happy.

“Jon? Can I ask for a favor?”

“Anything.”

“We need to make a stop before we go home. To pick up Ghost.”

Jon squeezes her hand. “Of course.”

“And… there’s something I have to tell you.”

“Alright…”

“I…” Sansa stops walking and turns so she’s facing him. He watches her take a deep breath, as if summoning courage. “I got a dog?”

She says it unsurely, like a question, and all the breath whooshes from his lungs. He’s already laughing when he breathes, _“What?”_

“It was the first thing I did. I missed Ghost, _so _much—”

“Ah, fuck…” He tries not to think of her in those first few days, alone in the house, missing not only him but the dog she’s come to love just as much as he does.

“It’s okay. I know he’s yours. He was yours before we met.”

“He’s _ours._ I was wrong to take him.”

“You were angry.” Sansa shrugs, a placid smile on her face as she joins their hands again. “Can’t change the past, right?”

Jon breathes out heavily. No, he can’t, but he’ll do everything he can to make up for it. “Sounds like we have two dogs,” he says, a ridiculously unexpected new reality that fills him with joy.

Sansa spins and claps her hands together in delight as she walks, carefree movements that make her look like a teenager again, warming his heart. “Her name’s Lady. I think she and Ghost will get along swell.”

Jon catches up to her, snagging her hip at the very top of the staircase. She stills, turning in the cradle of his arms, and when she laughs suddenly he kisses the sound out of her mouth, even if neither of them quite stops smiling.

* * *

The cradle of Jon’s face in her hands, the scratch of his beard on her palms, is a familiarity she cannot fathom ever having lived without. They never fully release each other, descending the steps hand in hand. Something smooth crawls under her skin, some warmth that’s found its way home again.

Sansa sees Bran first, a few feet away from the base of the stairs. She sees the moment he sees them, the way his eyes light up. A smile so pure it makes him look ten again takes over his face.

“You’re…” He clears his throat. Sansa is surprised at the sweep of emotion on her little brother’s face, wants to cry all over again. “You’re okay?”

Sansa looks down to where their hands are joined. “Yes.”

Jon follows her gaze, squeezes her hand tighter before winking at her brother. A ridiculous giggle rises in her throat—is it possible to be so happy again, so soon?

“Bran, where’s Mom?”

“Don’t know—”

“Found it, finally.” Meera, brandishing a thick black coat, nods in Sansa’s and Jon’s direction before approaching Bran. “It was buried.”

“I can imagine. Thanks.” Bran, smiling warmly, slides a hand into Meera’s hair as she leans down. Sansa glances at Jon and finds him already looking at her. She feels normal again, feels _right,_ knowing she can find him across any room and talk without talking.

“We’re going out for some air,” Bran tells them.

Meera nods. “I’m _stuffed, _I feel like I’ll melt into my shoes if I don’t get out of here.” 

“Have a nice walk, _stay warm,”_ Sansa calls as the two move into the foyer. “They’re adorable,” she whispers to Jon, hands clasped in front of her.

His arm slides smoothly over the line of shoulders and holds her close as they walk deeper into the house. _“Adorable_ is Rickon and his little adult relationship, that’s what’s adorable.”

“Oh my god!” she squeals. “I want to _adopt_ Shireen, I do.”

“Looks like he’s gonna take care of that for you.”

“Ugh, when did he get so _grown up?”_

They share whispered gossip as they drift into the house, sharing in the way that was denied them before.

* * *

Sansa finds her mother in the kitchen, exactly where she hoped to find her—though she’s never one for an Irish goodbye, she thinks that this year will be the exception. It will suffice to say goodbye to her parents alone before grabbing their coats and running off. 

“Darling, don’t forget to take some of these leftovers,” Mom says absentmindedly, cutting another sheaf of tinfoil. The kitchen island is covered in tupperware and trays, which are being carried in two at a time by Dad. In the back of the kitchen, Brienne and Jamie hover by the open fridge—forgotten, as they look more engaged with each other than their surroundings. The sight amuses Sansa, and she can clearly picture how it’d come to be—Mom must have fielded away all offers to help in the cleanup except for Brienne’s. Not only is Brienne one of her mother’s dearest friends, but her stubbornness uniquely exceeds her mother’s own. Jamie must have followed, drawn to Brienne as if connected by an invisible string, only to tease and prod her as he couldn’t seem to resist doing. Now they stand, hands on their hips as they engage in what looks like a heated argument.

“They’re _supposed_ to be helping.”

Sansa jumps at the too-loud whisper, turns and elbows Rickon in the stomach. The little monster seems unbothered, stuffing his mouth with cornbread.

“God, Rickon, don’t be such a sneak.”

“Whatever.” He drifts out of the kitchen without attracting either parent’s attention, a special skill that can only be mastered by the youngest sibling. Sansa glances at Brienne and Jamie again, then looks at Jon. He nods.

“Let us help you, Mrs. Stark,” Jon says, rolling up his sleeves before Mom can object—though she certainly tries.

“Oh no, no, Jon, I insist you take a seat—”

“Let him help, Cat,” Dad interrupts, whisking Jon away to task him with something or another before Mom can object.

“That man,” Mom tuts disapprovingly, though she doesn’t seem quite displeased. In fact, she looks radiantly happy.

Sansa starts to scoop the remaining casserole into plastic containers. “He’s right, Mom. You have a huge family and friends here. You should let us help out.”

“Just so you know, it was only Brienne and that darling girl of Rickon’s who offered to help out, and I couldn’t have that, of course. It’s not like I told anyone ‘no.’”

Sansa keeps from rolling her eyes, something her mother would surely take as disrespect. “Sure, Mom.”

They slip into a silent rhythm—Sansa and her mother packing and storing food while Dad and Jon bring in all the debris from the dining room. After, Dad suggests they start working on washing and drying dishes. Watching the two work seamlessly, chatting all the while and occasionally sharing a laugh, warms Sansa’s heart.

“You look better than you did when you came in.”

Sansa starts, finding her mother regarding her softly, one dry hand coming up to pat her face. “More color in your cheeks. I told you, you needed to eat.”

She blushes. “Yep, it was really good, Mom.”

She’s nearly done with storing away the meats when Theon drifts into the kitchen, grinning when he sees her. “I’m jonesing for a beer.”

“Me too,” Sansa mumbles, somehow surprised by how worn she feels.

“I’ll bet. It looks like a soup kitchen in here.”

“No thanks to _you.”_

Theon shrugs. “Hey, I’ve been busy with important work. Keeping the peace, moderating that dumb game of yours. Gendry won the pie, by the way. Lovesick idiot.”

“Jealous?”

He doesn’t miss a beat. “Isn’t it obvious?”

Theon turns away then, hopping over to the fridge—thankfully closed now, with Brienne and Jamie absent—and withdraws a six pack, handing a beer to everyone as he makes his way back to her. Only Jon good-naturedly refuses, and Sansa sees him say _‘I’m driving’ _before giving Theon a grateful pat on the back. Though his gloved hand, soapy with dishwater, soaks Theon’s shirt through—making Theon cringe and curse as the rest of them laugh, Dad included.

Sansa’s still shaking her head in amusement when Theon returns. She takes a swig out of the cold beer he offers her. “Still glad you came?”

“Yep. Though I didn’t get to spend enough time with you.”

Sansa lifts her hands and spreads her fingers in a helpless gesture. “It’s _chaos_ over here. Maybe over Christmas.”

“As if that won’t be a hundred times worse.” Theon pinches the bridge of his nose. “Lunch soon?”

“Sure. We have a lot to talk about.”

Theon gasps dramatically. “Oh, _do_ we?”

“Yes, you won’t believe who they fired from the sixth floor, it was—oh, later, later. And I have someone I want you to meet.”

Theon crosses his arms slowly over his chest. “Is this a setup, Sansa Stark?”

“It iiiiis,” she sing-songs.

“With a woman recently fired from your establishment.”

Sansa laughs. “No. With a good friend of mine, actually so you _better _be on your best behavior. This woman’s already way too good for you.”

Theon grins, completely unruffled. “Exactly how I like ’em.”

Sansa can’t help but grin back. “Seriously, she’s a gem. She’s a social worker who works with the seniors at the hospital. She comes from a stuffy rich family with a ton of problems but she’s turned her back on them and chosen this life instead. She’s close to one of her brothers though, the two of them against the world type thing. Sound like someone you know?”

Even Theon can’t help but begrudgingly admit it. “Maybe.”

“Her name’s Myrcella,” Sansa continues, emboldened by her victory. “She’s smart and nurturing and—”

“Hot?”

“Ugh, Theon, I swear to god! She’s gorgeous, okay? Again, _way _out of your league. So if you’re, you know, not ready for something serious… anyway, think about it and let me know before I make the introduction.” 

“I will,” Theon says, surprisingly sober.

Sansa beams as Jon drifts over. “Finally done?”

“Enough that your dad dismissed me, anyway.”

“Well let’s go then, everyone’s downstairs…” Theon jerks a thumb over his shoulder.

Sansa meets Jon’s gaze, decides they should. “Only for a second, we’re about to head out.”

Theon shakes his head. _“Boring…”_

* * *

Though Ned Stark can hardly be called a chatterbox, the minutes Jon works beside him fly by. When they’re not exchanging work anecdotes or updates on their shared family—Ned calls it so, _“our” _family, an inclusion that floods him with gratitude—they work in comfortable silence. Jon looks around at Ned, Catelyn, Rickon slipping in and out, this kitchen—and the radiant center of it all, Sansa with a roll of tinfoil in her hands and kiss-bruised lips—and knows he will never take any of it for granted again.

When they’re done, Jon follows Theon into the basement. There’s a sense of guilt-ridden generosity twisting through Jon when he looks at Theon now, a petty graciousness—the envy he’d felt before has gone, leaving a vacuum behind. He feels unbalanced, as if he has something to make up for. A silly thought, an unwanted ripple effect of thinking Theon might step into his shoes.

In the basement, lit only by the huge flat screen and a few lava lamps, Sansa’s siblings and their partners lay sprawled on the sectional. Only Arya and Meera are seated on the ground, fixated on the ongoing game. Robin has apparently been forced out of his place, now sitting glumly in the corner playing with some handheld device.

Arya spares a glance for them as they enter, manages an exaggerated roll of her eyes even as her thumbs on the controller continue to move seamlessly. “Ugh, where have _you two _been? Just so you know, there’s hardly any dessert left—”

“I could ask you the same thing!” Sansa exclaims, the volume and triumph in her voice causing Jon to look curiously at her. Sansa waits, bouncing on the balls of her feet—an endearing picture—until she has the attention of the whole group before announcing, “I saw Arya and Gendry basically _doing it _in the bushes.”

“I did not—” Shocked, Arya drops the controller as the group erupts into laughter. “I didn’t—_we did not!” _

“Sounds like you did!” Meera pokes Arya in the ribs, pointing to the screen and gloating over her win, which causes Arya to tackle her. Meera shrieks with laughter.

As a gentle quiet slips in with the laughter fading out, Sansa announces their departure and starts her individual goodbyes. Jon starts at the other end of the circle, mollifying a murderous Arya—“Can’t take it as good as you give it, huh? Come on, you tease her constantly—be a good sport”—and promising Meera he’ll return to the gym next week. When he and Sansa meet in the middle, he holds the flat of his palm to the small of her back. A promise. _Soon. _

Gendry pulls Jon away from the group when he reaches him. “I won the pie, dude. Arya’s gonna kill me for this, but—do you want a piece?”

Jon blinks. Too good to be true, certainly. “Really? Why?”

Gendry shrugs. “Don’t know. It’s just a feeling. Look, do you want it or not?”

This night has already given him so much, but it seems he and Sansa are even luckier than he thought they were. “Yes.”

* * *

As they step out of the warmth of the Stark fortress, Catelyn’s well-wishes at their back and his arms laden with bags of food, a sprinkle of snow begins to fall.

“Oh!” Sansa sticks out her tongue, stubbornly holds the position until she tastes something. Gleeful and red-nosed and exquisite, she smiles at him. “Merry Christmas.”

“Already?” he teases, unable to manage more. He is breathless at the sight of her.

“It’s post-Thanksgiving, you know the rules. I think it’s going to be a good one.”

The walk to their cars is warmed by Sansa’s form pressed up against him, the polar opposite of this earlier pilgrimage in every way. Her arm is threaded through his, the grip bruisingly tight. The brisk wind carries the overwhelming scent of her, citrus and morning dew. Their steps are so close he worries, fleetingly, that she might trip. He tightens his hold.

When they reach the right block, Sansa hops into his Range Rover wordlessly. The gratitude that fills Jon shocks him into stillness. “I’ll take an Uber out and bring your car back tomorrow,” he promises as he settles into the driver’s seat.

Sansa twists her body in the seat, turning towards him, head leaning against the chair. Her eyes are bottomless in the dark. “We’ll figure it out.”

At the hotel, Sansa spends a few tearful minutes with a joyful Ghost on the floor. She starts to pack his things but Jon drags her out of the room with a hand snagged on her waist, nothing more than Ghost’s leash in his fist. “Later.”

“But how will you check out—”

“I’ll check out later, I’ll come back for all this stuff later.” He drops a kiss on her shoulder. “Let’s just go home now.”

The first step into the townhouse is overwhelming— Jon’s hand automatically reaching for the switch he knows is there, the familiar drag of the rug beneath his feet as he wipes off his shoes, a hint of cinnamon and vanilla, what must be seasonal candles clinging to the air. Tears sting Jon’s eyes at the familiarity, at the deep longing he wasn’t aware of being filled.

Ahead of him, Sansa turns on lights as she goes, Ghost following her like the lovesick mongrel he is. Jon follows at a more leisurely pace, absorbing everything. It isn’t that he forgot, it’s that he didn’t realize how much he’d left behind.

Pictures of them together on the east gallery wall, the largest print of them embracing against the glittering backdrop of the Seine. In the mudroom, several of his lighter spring coats. His shoes mixed in with hers. He thinks of Sansa refusing to touch his things, forcing herself to walk through the graveyard of what they’d lost.

He thought _he _was suffering, haunted by memories alone. But this…

He moves further into the house. His roaming gaze catches on the little side table on the left of the patio door atop which his books are piled haphazardly, so he can snag one easily on the way out. Sansa hates them there, an unsteady tower that’s always collapsing, but she hasn't moved it.

This, suddenly, is too much. Tears roll down his face, hot and punishing.

“Jon? Jon, I put Ghost with Lady in the den, they’re…”

Her eager voice trails off as she catches sight of him, her entire being stilling.

Jon extends a hand, and she takes it. He isn’t sure which of them leads the other to the bedroom.

* * *

Perfumes again, potent and pointed, piecing together a picture of their life together that only exists in the air. In the bedroom, fresh linen, Sansa’s French unisex cologne. Eucalyptus candle. Even a touch of him lingers, the coconut of his shampoo. Jon wonders, dizzyingly, if Sansa’s been using it.

“Missed you,” he mumbles into that silky hair as fumbling hands grope and peel away layers. He wonders dimly how many times he can repeat it before it loses meaning. “Missed you, missed this—”

“Me too, oh god—wait, wait hold on—”

He releases her, watches her walk with her dress dragged down to her hips and her breasts bare through a slice of moonlight. She crouches on the floor by her coat, carelessly thrown off, and digs into the pocket. He watches her withdraw his mother’s postcard, carefully laying it on the dresser beneath her jewelry box.

“I didn’t want to forget.” Her voice is a detached whisper. Everything feels like a dream.

“Come here,” Jon commands hoarsely, then backs her onto the bed.

Slowly, reverently, he molds his mouth to every part of her. Curls his tongue between her legs until she cries, ignores her when she begs him to stop. Twice he drinks from cunt until he lets her drag him up her body, licks into her mouth instead. When they make love they are curved around each other, clinging.

* * *

Sansa doesn’t expect to fall asleep, but she does. Peace steals her consciousness, and when she blinks awake she feels Jon’s chest beneath her ear. The steady rise and fall. His hand carding softly through her hair.

“How are you still awake?”

“I feel wired.” Despite this claim, Jon’s voice sounds weary. “I feel—I don’t know. The last two weeks didn’t feel like real life. Now this doesn’t feel real, either.” His grip tightens on her, and Sansa already knows what he will say before he says it. “I’m scared to go to sleep.”

A strangled admission that brings tears to her eyes. “I’m _right here.” _

She feels him swallow. “I’m scared, to— to find out I dreamed this.”

“It’s not all bad,” she says, forcing her voice to be light as she leans up on her elbows to look at him. “If this _is_ a dream, you’ll know to call me when you wake up. I’ll come over to the hotel, or you can come home, and…”

He grins, mirth fading into softness as his hand cradles her face. “You always were cleverer than me.”

Rudely, her stomach rumbles. Jon’s grin returns, widens. “Are you hungry?”

She laughs. “Is that horrible?”

His response is a kiss to her forehead. “No. You barely ate.”

“Then I’m starving.”

Jon starts to shift and Sansa slides off of him. Years of sharing a bed have attuned them to each other. “I’ll make eggs.”

Sansa scoffs. “Bold of you to think there’s an ounce of groceries in this house. I’ve been surviving on gin and the occasional Postmates.”

Jon’s eyes melt, words sprouting on his parted lips— _I’m sorry, I didn’t want to cause you pain, I hate that you were hurting. _Things she can clearly see, things that wouldn’t serve either of them to repeat.

“Your mom gave us enough food for a month. I’ll fix you up a plate.” He lifts her hand and presses a gentle kiss at her wrist. “And stop by the den to introduce myself to Lady.”

“She’ll love that.” He’ll take the dogs out, too, despite the snow—Sansa knows it. He’ll bring her a glass of Perrier with her food. She knows that, too.

She cuddles into the duvet, warm and sated. “See you soon.”

When he returns, it’s with warm plates balanced between cold hands. One plate has shredded turkey sprinkled over hefty piles of sweet potatoes and mac and cheese. The other—

“The _pie,” _she gasps. Stunned, she looks at Jon. “How—”

“A miracle,” he says, then shushes her with a kiss. Flavor fills her mouth with every drag of his tongue.

“You took a bite,” she accuses, hands swapping at him lightly.

He grins against her mouth—she feels teeth. “Guilty.”

“How dare you.”

But his smile, the joy she can feel radiating off him like heat doesn’t abate with her righteous anger. “You can have the rest,” he purrs. “You can have it all.”

“No,” she murmurs, heart full, and swipes a finger through the filling before holding it in front of his mouth. They will share it. They will share everything.

They eat the pie with nothing but their fingers, their mouths never parting long enough to allow for the forks Jon had brought. They feed sweetness to each other, much needed nourishment in salt, sugar, slow strokes. They leave stains on the pale duvet. _Glad to, lucky to—_no, Sansa doesn’t mind. Later, she will sleep in his embrace, stomach pleasantly full. Later still, there will be broken bridges to mend, old wounds to heal. There are things to figure out, but now they indulge. Now, they lay their weary heads to rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me at [missfaber on tumblr!](http://https://missfaber.tumblr.com/)


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